BIO - Biology Courses
A&S Biology Course Descriptions
BIO240/241 - Molecular Biology/Cell and Developmental Biology
O.K material. 3 out of the 4 profs were really good. Prof. Chang sort of annoyed me though. Textbook extremely dry. Most of the labs in Bio241 are pretty boring and pointless (the drosophilla one is cool), but at least they don't take 3 hours.
BIO255Y1 - Cell and Molecular Biology with Advanced Laboratory
This is the new BIO250/240+241 course with advanced lab (NB: has a cGPA prereq of 3.0 apparently). I loved the lab component of this course. All the labs were wet labs, and the class size was much smaller. Better still, all the people in the course liked labs. Our writing assignments were lab reports on the whole semester which was a nice way to gain useful experience writing scientific reports and to sum up the semester. For more details, there's a whole thread on BIO240/241 vs. BIO255. The lecture material is what it is, and pretty much everyone has to take it. Memorization of stupid details that anyone not in a specialized field would just look up. Mixture of profs, mostly good. Harris and Campbell were great. Desveaux and Chang, ok.
Rating:4/5
BIO260H1 - Concepts in Genetics
Marking Scheme: Mark breakdown: 4 assignments (10%, 15%, 12%, 13%), 2 MC tests (non cumulative) at 25% each.
This course started so well and ended so badly. The assignments were poorly worded and marked totally arbitrarily depending on the TA and the TA's mood/understanding of the also arbitrary marking guidelines. My marks have been either 68 or 98. I'm doing ok in the course overall (especially considering the very low average so far), but this is a course where the teaching staff seem to want people to badly just to "prove" that the material is difficult. The material is interesting though, and McCourt (first prof) is fantastic. He's a really engaging professor who asks a lot of questions and demands people think outside the box. I definitely enjoyed his section of the course. The second section, however, has been totally awful, and I'm one of the few people who goes. This is the only course that I said I would not retake (on the course eval.). Overall: mixed. But might be better next year when Guttman is back for the 2nd half.
Rating: First half: 3.75/5 ; Second half: 1/5
