Subject Reviews (with PDF compilation) (2 Viewers)

[Iheartpaulfrank]

Re: Subject Reviews

That would be orsum. Does he have msn? If so, can i get it. I wish to see the UOS outline to establish the workload.

Hey Stas, have you decided to take ENGL1000 or not?

 

[stazi]

Re: Subject Reviews

I'm about 50/50 on it. Bookie helped me out with the UoS outline. Overloading is tempting though, but I guess I'll wait for my results this semester before making my final decision. If I get 90 in mktg3117, ill prob overload

 

[Iheartpaulfrank]

Re: Subject Reviews - UPDATED WITH .PDF on first post

Oh okay then. It's just my friend never heard from you.

 

[Nebuchanezzar]

Re: Subject Reviews - UPDATED WITH .PDF on first post

GOVT 1101 - Australian Politics

Ease: 6/10
It's not hard by any means, the subject matter is straight foward, the lectures are sufficient and the resource book/text book is full of extra information that's useful. On the other hand, it's quite tedious to have to remember a lot of stuff. It's not hard, but it's also not very exciting.
The essay was a major furfy as well. The questions were a little vague, and the marking criteria not all that obvious. Perhaps the Economics faculty should take a page out of the Education faculties book and make criteria abundantly clear, and actually mark off the criteria so student knows what they're meant to be aiming for.
The bibliographic essay was a bit of a joke. It's incredibly hard to articulate an entire essay in one page, shortening it down so that it's short, but also appearing as if you know what you're talking about. I didn't do too well in my bibliographic essay, and I think that the poor structure of a preliminary essay which is marked as an actual essay is a bit contradictory, and dumb. Maybe that's just me though...

Lecturer: 6.5/10
I had the lecturer, as the tutor too. I'm a little torn about Shelly. On the one hand, she articulated things quite well, organised the content in a good way and made things fairly straight foward. Her lectures were quite interesting at times. On the other hand, she didn't make much of an effort to make her lectures really interesting (something which is a pity, in this field), I dozed off a few times in her two hour lectures, and I found her personality to be one of being 'head and shoulders above the rest of the scum' type personality. She seems like a snob, and as such I can't really profess to like the lady. Her references to "political scientists", 'sif there is any such thing pissed me off to no end. Fortunately, she kept those references to a minimum (although the resource book was full of it).

Interest: 7/10
Interesting for sure...for the most part. The stuff about policy and interest groups was deathly boring, but the content about federation, the constitution and media was actually quite stimulating. Everyone knows what Australian Politics is about though, so it shouldn't come as a surprise that something so diverse would have parts that are interesting to some, and boring to others. It should also be said, that her lecturing style sometimes made the boring parts a little more boring, but also made the exciting parts (media/constitution) a lot more exciting.

Overall: 6.5/10
It's a decent course, let down by monotony, occasionally shabby lecturing and an overall personality clash of the subject with my own interests. There's a definate air, or what I perceived to be an air of this subject being a prestigious subject. The references to "political science", the lecturer, the subject matter didn't really bode well with me. I'll also say that it seemed to be, that the course and the content was a bit of a case of overcomplicating things, or so it seemed to me. The "policy cycle" is a great example. It's a case of taking something so simple, and creating something out of nothing. There was an aura of that around most matters in this course. It's extremely difficult to articulate how it sits with me. It just seemed a little snobby is all. I guess that's a personal preference though, and doesn't really speak for the subject...kinda. Still, a decent introduction to Australian Politics and fairly interesting all around. I'll be steering clear from this discipline from now on though (probably because I don't have much more space for electives. )

 

[^CoSMic DoRiS^^]

Re: Subject Reviews - UPDATED WITH .PDF on first post

ENGL1025 Fiction Film and Power

Ease: 6/10. Extremely tough going at first and I had trouble finding a distinct thread linking all the waffle together for the first few weeks. Once you get used to Stefan's lecturing style and come to expect him to pitch the content at a higher level than you might be used to (especially right out of the HSC) it becomes easier. There were a couple of concepts which I never really fully understood ("end games" for example) and if I was to try to give you a summary of what this course is about I would be here all day, but suffice to say that once you get used to it, it's not so bad. I wouldn't recommend skipping lectures though for your own sake. Stefan is against WebCT so you won't find any summaries for you there. Oh, also, Stefan likes to use art to illustrate his points in a roundabout kinda way. Sometimes I didnt see the point, other times it was actually pretty cool. But don't freak if you walk in expecting english and see all this abstract art on the powerpoint, it's just what he does.

Lecturers: 6/10 Stefan did the vast majority of the lectures. He's a nice guy and all, very friendly and unintimidating. But his lecturing style can really be a bit confusing/boring/complex/all of the above...you have to listen hard. If you lack a vocabulary, acquire one, because he has an extensive list of intelligent phrasing that he likes to use (I was so absolutely lost in the first lecture because of this). But like I said he's really nice. The other lecturers we had were alright, nothing spectacular. The V for Vendetta lecturer guy had some interesting points.

Interest: 6/10. it's interesting once you manage to cut through the waffle and actually get a grasp on the concepts. i found some stuff boring though, notably the simulacra concept.

Overall: 6/10.

 

[Triangulum]

Re: Subject Reviews - UPDATED WITH .PDF on first post

GOVT1101 Australian Politics
Lecturer: Shelly Savage

Ease: 7.5/10. Nothing in the course was particularly brain-bending, and a good knowledge of the textbook and lecture notes was generally sufficient for the exam. I agree with Nebuchanezzar, though, that the assessments were pretty dodgy. They expected too much from the very short bibliographic assignment, and they did that hateful thing where they specify the type of sources they want you to use, so you had to use a web site, a government/NGO report, and so on even if there weren't any particularly relevant ones. It took me forever to find a report on my topic, and it wasn't even in Fisher or online, so I had to trek over to the State Library to get it. It wouldn't surprise me if people whose research was less thorough than mine never found a report. So that was pretty poorly thought through by Shelly. Also, most of the essay options relied on a recent case study, which was a problem because they were so recent (2006 stem cell debate, McKew for Bennelong, Brian Burke) that there was no academic literature on them. Again, poorly thought through. Also, some of the questions were quite unclear, a problem which carried over into the exam. But for all those complaints, if you got started early and researched thoroughly there was no real difficulty with the assessments. I got a high credit in the essay and assignment, and probably would've got a distinction if I'd addressed the case study more.

Lecturer: N/A. I didn't go to the lectures because of a timetable clash. Props to Shelly for having comprehensive notes in the lecture powerpoints she put on Blackboard, though.

Interest: 8/10. Most of the stuff in this course I found pretty interesting, but I've always been interested in government and civics so that was always going to be the case. Standouts for me were figuring out that elections and parliaments are about far more than simply selecting a government, most of the stuff about federalism/the constitution/the High Court, and some of the stuff about the public service and neoliberalism. But bear in mind that since I didn't go to the lectures these judgements are based on my own interest in the topics and the reading, not on how the material is presented.

Overall: 7.5/10. This course felt pretty nothingy to me, probably because the only time I spent on it in a normal week was the tute and about an hour skimming the readings. However, I feel that doing the essay and preparing for the exam did give me an appreciation of the workings of democracy and Australian government which I didn't have before, which is a good thing, I suppose. It was reasonably interesting, so if you want to major in GOVT or just want a better understanding of the government then I'd recommend this subject.

 

[velox]

Re: Subject Reviews - UPDATED WITH .PDF on first post

Chinese 1A CHNS1101
Ease: 5/10. Had a reasonable amount of difficulty with this subject as memorising the characters/words for the weekly vocab tests (2.5%) each is a big pain. Homework is due every week (lab work and written homework), and this is strictly enforced, no homework on day its due (or if your lucky, the next day) = no marks. The HW marks saved me(at least I think they will). HW is not too hard, just takes ages. There are 2 large (20%) tests in the semester, testing writing/listening etc, I found them hard, but others didn't. Mainly memorising again. I aced the speaking part of the course and found it easy, but others didnt fare so well. This subject had an overwhelming amount of work and we did 1 chapter a week (way too fast)
Lecturer: 5/10. Dr Kong is a good lecturer, interesting and always helps you out, however I didnt listen to most lectures as the class test is at the end of the lecture, so i usually revised during the lecture, thus missing it. Lectures get 5/10 as they are structured poorly i.e. tests at the end, which makes you miss the lecture out as most people are compelled to do some last minute study

Interest: 8/10. Fairly interesting, depends on the individual. Classes were quite fun, my tutor was awesome (but she isnt returning next sem ). You always get picked on to answer questions so it makes you study.

Overall: 7/10. Would have been higher if there was less work. Overall quite fun, but a lot of work, but its very rewarding when you can understand other mandarin speakers (to some extent).

 

[stazi]

Re: Subject Reviews - UPDATED WITH .PDF on first post

MKTG3117 Services Marketing
Lecturer: Iain Black

Ease: 9/10 Nothing was particularly difficult. All the assessments were quite simple and were very interesting to produce. I would recommend going to all lectures, though, as Iain will give you hints about the final exam to reward those who come. Note that the workload is high, though, with loaaaads of readings to do.

Lecturer: 7.5/10 It's hard to assess Iain. He has a lot of knowledge and he teaches well, although he is a bit too quiet, and his accent serves as a bit of a barrier until you learn to understand it. He also adds a bit of a political and environmental spin to some things, which is very welcome.

Interest: 7/10 - probably my least interesting marketing subject, as it was a bit dry, although very applicable to the real world, and I'm sure I'll use a lot of the things discussed in my future jobs.

Overall: 7.5/10 - I quite enjoyed the course, however, it was just less interesting than what marketing usually is. I craved a bit more creativity and unfortunately I wasn't able to demonstrate it in the course.

CLAW1001 Commercial Transactions A
Lecturer: Giuseppe Carabetta

Ease: 7.5/10 - it is quite difficult learning to think from a very different perspective. However, it is also very rewarding. The final exam was way too long and I didn't get to finish it, thus putting me out of HD range. There is also a lot of reading to do, but the readings are very interesting.

Lecturer: 9.5/10 - Giuseppe is amazing. His delivery of course content is always fascinating and interesting. People are actively engaged during lectures, as he asks lots of questions. He's also a very funny and charismatic guy, although he does like to show off quite a bit (but then again, if I achieve as much as him, I would flaunt my achievements, too). Most people come to lectures, even if the times are inconvenient for them (i.e. their only class for the day).

Interest: 9/10 - some course content was a bit boring, but that was the very small minority. Overall, the course was amazingly interesting. I really, truly loved it. Also, you can apply everything you learn to the real world: something which can't be said about most other subjects.

Overall: 9.5/10 - a great subject which I would recommend anyone to take. It is relevant, interesting and very rewarding in the end. All in all, I would describe it as 'fun'.

 

[Mao Ze Dong]

Re: Subject Reviews - UPDATED WITH .PDF on first post

May as well help some kids out.

MECO 1003 - Principles of Media Writing
Lecturers: Catharine Lumby / Anne Dunn

Ease: 8/10 - the lecture material was fairly tedious, but interesting nonetheless and a good background to the stuff that will be studied in later years. assessments are relatively easy for those skilled enough, and are rather fun to do [go get interviews, read up articles, then write your own] except for the final exam, which consists of two essays based on lecture material. Easy and doable nonetheless.

Lecturer: 8/10 - Lumby, 5/10 - Dunn. Catharine Lumby did a great job and made things exciting with her involvement of the group. So it was cool, but she's leaving for UNSW and thus she sucks a bit. Anne Dunn is very knowledgable and her expertise invaluable, but when it comes to the lectures she just read off the readings [which she wrote], so there wasn't much point to her lectures in this subject.

Interest: 8/10 - the theoretical aspects which you learn during the lectures and readings are probably worth 3/10, but the tutorials are so much fun due to their practicality and it really works your mind having to write a news story in 20 minutes or so. Interesting.

Overall: 8/10 - all round generally awesome. The set up is great [lectures - theory, tutes - pracs] and most of it is fun. Plus, seeing as only MECO students can do it, the people are great fun to be around too. And pretty hot.


ENGL1000 - Academic Writing
Co-ordinator: Rebecca Johinke

Ease: 8/10 - would be 10, except the online lecture system makes it a bit difficult to remember that you have to do it, and i found that id only be doing it 10 minutes before rushing off to uni. That said, the material is non-existent and its pretty much based on your own abilities. You learn a bit about rhetoric and the philosophies behind different types of rhetoric, and while philosophy is gay, you dont really need to understand the stuff to ace this sub.

Lecturer: No marks, because we didn't have lectures, but Johinke co-ordinated the course well, kept students up to date and gave good feedback on assessments and stuff.

Interest: 3/10. It's really not that interesting. You don't really learn anything and you just read essays and see whats wrong with them. Not a subject to do out of interest, which many international students have made the mistake of doing.

Overall: 7/10 - relatively useful, and the textbook. Soles' Essentials of Academic Writing is useful for everything as it covers everything you'll need for an essay for future use. A downer is the 2 hour tutorial which you must attend. Also the online lecture thing - gotta be motivated to do em. But otherwise, relatively easy and you should find easy marks here if you need them.

 

[stazi]

Re: Subject Reviews - UPDATED WITH .PDF on first post

"the online lecture systems makes it a bit difficult to remember that you have to do it"
what do you mean by that?

 

[Mao Ze Dong]

Re: Subject Reviews - UPDATED WITH .PDF on first post

well, you forget these things. i mean, its up on web CT, but theres no reminder or anything that you should do the online lecture. not that they were that useful, anyway.

 

[tennille]

Re: Subject Reviews - UPDATED WITH .PDF on first post

BCHM3071/3971: Molecular Biology and Biochemistry- Genes

Lecturers: Prof. Merlin Crossley, Dr. Hannah Nicholas, Prof. Tony Weiss and Dr. David Gell

Ease: 7/10- Many of the things that are taught in this course would have been taught in MBLG2071/2971., such as DNA damage, transcription factors, etc. It's not exactly difficult, but there is a lot to learn.

Lecturers: 8/10- Merlin Crossley is awesome, as always. Hannah Nicholas is lovely and her stuff on DNA methylation and imprinting is quite interesting. Her lecture notes are very thorough. Tony Weiss' stuff is interesting, but he pretty much just copies his lecture notes from the Genes VIII textbook, which is annoying. David Gell is okay.

Practical course: 8/10- Did reverse transcriptase PCR, southern blotting to identify a transgene and restriction enzyme digestion to identify which lambda phage fragment was inserted into an E.coli plasmid. Pretty interesting. There are a lot of practical reports (mainly in-book ones, but one scientific paper).

Interest: 8/10- Very interesting. Learnt about X chromosome inactivation, Imprinting (how either the maternal or paternal allele is silenced), DNA methylation, chromosomes/chromatin, intron splicing and autosplicing, DNA damage and repair, homologous recombination- all very interesting.

Advanced Course: The advanced course required 3 additional seminars in which we learnt about amyloids and protein aggregation. We had to do a presentation on amyloids as well.

Overall: 8/10- I definitely recommend it.


BCHM3081/3981: Molecular Biology and Biochemistry- Proteins

Lecturers: Dr. Joel Mackay, Dr. Jacqui Matthews, Dr. Simon Easterbrook-Smith

Ease: 5/10- Much more difficult especially when the lecture notes are shocking.

Lecturers: 4/10- None of them are fantastic, particularly Jacqui Matthews. Make sure you turn up to every lecture in the course, especially for Simon's lectures as he uses the whiteboard/blackboard and only puts up a summary of the lecture on WebCT. If you miss out on a lecture, make sure you listen to the audios on WebCT (assuming they'll still do that next year).

Interest: 4/10. It wasn't too interesting. Joel's stuff was pretty bland on Stability of proteins, chaperones, ways to improve protein stability, etc. Jacqui's stuff on different ways to clone a gene and to investigate properties of proteins is okay once you begin to understand the stuff. Simon's stuff on protein import/export and membranes isn't too bad either. Overall, a lot of the stuff you'll learn you would have learnt in previous years.

Practicals: 7/10- You'll pretty much do one huge experiment over 6 weeks. You'll be looking at the properties of the protein, Replication Termination Protein (RTP). You'll be overexpressing theproitein, isolating and purifying it, and looking at it's DNA binding properties. Be prepared to stay past 1 pm for some of the pracs.

Advanced Course: 3 additional seminars learning the molecular properties of RTP. You'll have to do a report on it as well.Overall: 5/10. It isn't that great.

Overall: 5/10- It isn't the best course, but I guess it depends on what you're interested it.

 

[cimbom]

Re: Subject Reviews - UPDATED WITH .PDF on first post

ECOS2903- Mathematical Economics A

Ease: 6/10
The content is easy once you get it but the mid- sem exam was very difficult and completely abstract. No calculators were allowed because questions were completely numberless. Most people didn't 'pass' the mid-sem after massive scaling. The final exam went better though because mid- sem questions (which we had limited solutions for) were repeated, and the lecturer made the questions more clear.

Lecturer: 6/10
Our lecturer was Don Wright. The lectures were mainly rewritten sections of the textbook with the lecturer's reworked examples. So we basically covered all of 'Essential Mathematics for Economic Analysis' except for maybe a chapter and a few sections (thankfully before it got too difficult).

Interest: 5/10
I was generally not interested in cobb- douglas functions and the like represented in three- dimensional planes. Alot of the mathematics we did was too complex and abstract to actually be interesting, in terms of its relevance to economics. Maybe derived demand functions from solving a lagrange equation (with multiple constraints) was kind of okay once you finally got to a simple answer?

Overall: 6/10
I feel alot more capable in mathematics having passed the unit, but it's hard to see its relevance to economics just yet.

 

[_dhj_]

Re: Subject Reviews - UPDATED WITH .PDF on first post

Don Wright was terrible. Probably one of the worst lecturers I've ever had.

ECOS2903
Ease 6/10
Lecturer 1.5/10
Interest 4/10
Overall 4/10

 

[Dragon Fanatic]

Re: Subject Reviews - UPDATED WITH .PDF on first post

Anth1001-
Ease 8/10- Not too difficult, just an overview of general anthropological ideas and concepts, and the amount of tards doing the course because its the first one on the list in Arts means that if you are even half intellectual you will get really good marks.

Lecturer 10/10- Daryl Feil is by far the best lecturer I had at Sydney uni in my first sememster here. Energetic, humourous and knowledgable made listening and going to the lectures a shitload easier.

Interest 9/10- For some reason I was intrigued by the concepts in the course, absolutely and utterly intrigued at the different ways of thinking people all around the world have. They present you with some material that really makes you wonder about our own society.

Overall 9/10- Its fuckin awesome, definately hit that shit up, if your considering it.

Meco1003

Ease 8/10- If you are genuinely interested and actually put a bit of work in you will breeze through this subject.

Lecturer- Lumby 9/10, Dunn 5/10: I rate lecturers purely on how they conduct a class, and whether or not they can interest me. Lumby made it easy for me to go to everyone of her lectures by having a whole range of material we could discuss in different formats and shit which was cool. Whereas Dunn ensured I didn't rock up after her first lecture, because her monotone is too much for me to handle, she is the most perfect speaker ever, NEVER and I mean NEVER makes any linguistic mistakes whatsoever, she's a machine, but a boring one at that. However, We only had her for like 3 or 4 lectures so it was all good.

Interest- 10/10: I love it, im passionate about it, and the practical tutorial system was the best idea ever.

Overall- 9/10- Just a fuckin awesome subject.

HSTY1022

Ease 7/10: Not simple, nor is it overly hard. Solid in its workload, but you can easily not do any readings except the one your tute preso is on for the entire semester, and thats what I did and still sounded intellectual in tutorial discussions. Essays are short and straight foward, get some books from the libes and you are set.

Lecturer- 6/10 It's hard for me to judge Pryor as I gave up on lectures after 2 weeks just cause I cbf, no other eason really. I spose if he was more engaging I would have rocked up.

Interest- 8/10- I love religious history, ESPECIALLY in the middle ages, which made this course extremely intriguing for me. The good part is I could just ignore all the other shit and concentrate on those aspects of the course that I enjoyed.

Overall- 6/10- Solid course, interesting and yeah shame it is being scrapped, which I had no idea about, probably because it was mentioned in a lecturer that I wasn't at.

GOVT1202

Ease 3/10: I hated it more than anything, readings were boring, essay was long and fucked and the exam was farcical. Too many readings, which are too hard to read due to their absolute blandness.

Lecturer 0/10: Worst ever, cannot be understood. Went to half the first lecture and that was the extent of my involvement with him. He was just so painful. Tutor was ok, but knew my hatred of the course so didnt like me.

Interest 0/10: Absolute pointless piece of shit. Why do you have to throw complex and confusing theory onto common sense concepts. I just hated it.

Overall: 1/10: I can't believe I passed. Worst subject ever. DO NOT DO IT. I can happily say that will be the last connection I will ever have with the Economics faculty. Fuck you Govt and fuck you economics.

 

[thenothing]

Re: Subject Reviews - UPDATED WITH .PDF on first post

MATH 1011 - Life Sciences Calculus

Ease: 4/10
I know that I'm going to either fail, or pass my an incredibly small margin, but regardless of that the course wasn't really all that hard. Reading through the resource book is probably enough to get anyone through the course, provided that they have a bit of a clue about HSC Mathematics. The examples exams are essentially identical to the one that's you're assessed on, so there's no lateral direction - study the manual and look at the exams and you'll do fine (and by that, I mean learn the questions in the past exams off by heart). Still, the shoddy lecture format, uninspiring content and the fact that it's a uni maths course means it's not that easy (then again, I'm no math whiz).

Lecturers: 1/10
Godawful lecturers, Godawful lecturing format, Godawful lecturing style. There's nothing that can be learned from some waffling old man by the name of Palmer (funny as he was) at 8am in the morning writing on endless powerpoints, nor is there anything that can be learned from two Asian men (Lai, Zhang) who've barely mastered phonics, droning on about some garbage that I couldn't care less about. No effort was made to make things interesting, none at all. I can respect that they don't give their best lecturers to the life science students, but God, give us something. Breaking it down:

Palmer: Funny, quirky old man but he was unfortunate enough to occupy the 8am slots, which I gave up on attending after week 2.
Lai: Funny, kinda cute guy (in a totally heterosexual way) but incredibly hard to understand.
Zhang: Hopeless, unintelligible lecturer. His lectures consistent of re-writing the resource book (which the other two mostly avoided, as best they could), pacing back and forth, laughing at the most incoherently unfunny things and yelling at people for talking. I cannot fault them, as Zhang is the most mindless, hopeless and awful lecturer I've encountered at USyd.

Interest: 0.5/10
It's maths. I liked it in the HSC because it was new. This was advanced HSC work, presented in an awful format. Kudos to Palmer for making things practical and interesting in his lectures, but as I said, there was no way I could keep going to them.

Overall: 2/10
It's a maths course, it's compulsory, it's shit.

I agree with all of that. I stopped going to the lectures, they were just pointless. Good luck passing, I'll need it too

 

[tennille]

Re: Subject Reviews - UPDATED WITH .PDF on first post

CHEM3112/3912: Materials Chemistry

Lecturers: Assoc. Prof. Brendan Kennedy, Dr. Chris Ling and Dr. Adam Bridgeman

Ease: 5/10- It's pretty hard (even though the exam was open book), especially Chris Ling's stuff on bonding and x-ray diffraction stuff. I think scaling was my saviour for this subject...

Lecturers: 7/10- All of them are pretty good. Although you should listen to them carefully, particularly for Brendan Kennedy and Chris Ling as the lectures notes are not detailed enough for the former, and the lecture notes are too complicated for the latter.

Interest: 6/10- Wasn't the most interesting course. If you like inroganic solids, fullerenes, lattice defects, unit cells, x-ray diffraction and superconductivty, then this is the course to do.

Overall: 6/10


CHEM3113/3913- Catalysis and Sustainable Processes

Lecturers: Assoc. Prof. Tony Masters and Assoc. Prof. Sebastien Perrier

Ease: 7/10- Unfortunately I had no idea what was going on throughout the semester due to me not paying attention, but once you study, you'll realise that the course is quite interesting and not that difficult to understand

Lecturers: 7/10- Both a quite good. All lecture notes are thorough.

Interest: 8/10- I quite enjoyed it and I wish I did pay attention throughout semester. You'll learn about polymerisation (free radical and "living"), different catalysts and their properties (metallocenes, zeigler-natta, etc), different catalytic cycles (decarbonylation, hydrogenation, hydroformylation, etc) and zeolites.

Overall: 8/10- I definitely recommend it.


For chemistry students regardless of the number/types of units of study they're doing:

Advanced Course (for advanced students): Additional seminars comprising 1 hr per week. We did asymmetric synthesis and "green" power. We did two assignments in groups of 3-4. The first assignment was devising a way to synthesise a drug and the second was to present a seminar on different technologies for power (nuclear power, wind power, clean coal, etc). There's a lot of work involved.

Practical Course: I must say that the practical course for third year chemistry is much more interesting than frist and second years. I love the inorganic labs where you have to do 5 mini practicals and 2 major projects. You'll write up a report for the two major projects and have an interview with an academic regarding the experiment. The experiments available include x-ray diffraction, synthesising linkage isomers and using differnt techniques (IR spectra, UV-vis spectra, etc) to identify different proterties, synthesising molybdenum compounds, etc. Very interesting. Experiments are done individually.

The physical labs involve four experiments comprising oone large research project. Ther are three to choose from; construction of a dye-sensitised solar cell, biodeisel and some biophysical one. I did the solar cell one and it was quite interesting. We investigated the properties of titanium dioxide and the effect of particle size, surface area, etc on the perfomrance of a solar cell. You'll do 3 major reports and correponding interviews, one smaller introductory project, and another intriductory project involving the use of solver. The experiments/reports are done in pairs.

 

[no7]

Re: Subject Reviews - UPDATED WITH .PDF on first post

MKTG2010 - Marketing Channels and Logistics

Ease: 8/10 Don't ask me why but I did this module in my first semester in first year (which was 1 year ago). Got a distinction so I think the grading is rather lenient. Textbook is rather dry but the midsem and exam only covered basic knowledge and basic marketing concepts. If you have a strong marketing background you will surely score for this.

Lecturer: 7/10 Lecturer was Charles Areni who was rather I felt was rather good at presenting the lecture. However I stopped attending lectures half way cos the timings were just inconvenient for me. Charles does give obvious hints about his pet topics to be tested in his exams though, might be worthwhile to attend.

Interest: 7/10 Interesting marketing module considering I haven't been in any before. Text was rather boring and content taught in too theoratical in nature but may useful if applied in real situations.

Overall: 7.5/10 Group projects once again kinda luck of the draw sometimes. Made new friends and we worked together to putting up a decent presentation. Overall, there was only 1 tutor for all the classes and he kinda just facilitated discussion rather than provided real answers, so everything is up to the you or the quality of the tutorial group. I took this module cos it was a core for my B.Com till they changed it to MKTG1000 this year



ACCT1002 - Accounting 1B

Ease: 9/10 (Compared to 1A) Compared to Acct1A which I did with Abdul in Sem 2 last year, this is a cakewalk. I used to have to do all the homework every week to keep up with 1A but with 1B, the first few weeks was a rehash of basic concepts in 1A and needed little effort. Things got trickier once new concepts like Management Accounting came in but basically so little ground was covered that I hardly believe this deserves a whole module.

Lecturer: ?/10 Lecturer was ... wait I didn't attend a single lecture for the whole semester. Just took everything off the slides and textbook. Sorry but someone has to help me out here. Anyway the lecturers were Rosina who lectured for most of the unit and Paul Blaney who did only the Management accounting sections i think.

Interest: 6/10 Accounting - Either you love it or you hate it. How interesting can it get? The tutor I got did her best to liven things up and pass on her knowledge though, kudos to her.

Overall: 7/10 Core module for graduating in B.Com once again I believe. I'm probably not the best person to rate this module but I personally think its easy if you have the fundamentals from 1A in place. Forgot to add, the coursework component was useless for marks. Everyone I know went into the final on 40+%. Check out the UOS for the coursework marks allocation there are way too much freebie marks.

Edit: edited for clarity

 

[stazi]

Re: Subject Reviews - UPDATED WITH .PDF on first post

ACCT1002 - Accounting 1B

Ease: 9/10 (Compared to 1A) Compared to Acct1A, this is a cakewalk. I used to have to do all the homework every week to keep up with 1A but with 1B, the first few weeks was a rehash of basic concepts in 1A and needed little effort. Things got trickier once new concepts like Management Accounting came in but basically so little ground was covered that I hardly believe this deserves a whole module.

Lecturer: ?/10 Lecturer was ... wait I didn't attend a single lecture for the whole semester. Just took everything off the slides and textbook. Sorry but someone has to help me out here..

Interest: 6/10 Accounting - Either you love it or you hate it. How interesting can it get? The tutor I got did her best to liven things up and pass on her knowledge though, kudos to her.


Overall: 7/10 Core module for graduating in B.Com once again I believe. I'm probably not the best person to rate this module but I personally think its easy if you have the fundamentals from 1A in place. Forgot to add, the coursework component was useless for marks. Everyone I know went into the final on 40+%. Check out the UOS for the coursework marks allocation there are way too much freebie marks.

People should also note that this is for the semester 1 accounting 1A course. It is run by a different lecturer and coordinator, from the Semester 2 course

 

[Mejc]

Re: Subject Reviews - UPDATED WITH .PDF on first post

ECMT 3110 Econometric Models and Methods

Ease: 8/10 The only thing in the course that i had to re-read a couple of times was large sample theory but our lecturer Vasilis had warned us that it was the hardest topic. All the other topics are straight forward. If you do the work for the course and attend your tutorials the final exam will not have any surprises in it. Literally about half the questions were exactly the same as the tutorial questions. The mid-semester was straight forward as well though many people stuffed up the last question probably 'cause they didn't revise their log and differentiation rules or got put off by the summation signs.

Lecturer:10/10 Vasilis is a gun and you have got to love that Greek accent. The other half of the Greek invasion, Anastasios is an awesome tutor, definitely clarifies things that were left a bit iffy in lectures.

Interest: 10/10 Really enjoyed this Econometrics subject, different to the ones i had done previously probably cause it was more theoretical.

Overall:9.5/10 Whilst people say it is the hardest metrics subject definitely the most rewarding.