Relating health and learning unimelb reviews năm 2024

Contact Hours: six x 1 hour lectures, one x 2 hour Computer-aided learning workshop (for 12 weeks) + 3 additional 2 hour sessions and one x 3 hour practical (for 7 weeks) per week

Total Time Commitment: 340hrs

Assessment:

Written laboratory report (1000 words, 10%); two tests during semester (20% total, 10% each); and two 2-hr end of semester exams (70% total, 35% each)

Lectopia Enabled: Yes, with screen capture. However, by not attending the lectures you won�t be able to participate in the Personal Response System (PRS) in physiology lectures.

Past exams available: Yes. There are two copies of exam 1 and five copies of exam 2 available in the university library repository. Additionally, you can use the PHYS20008 exams for physiology revision. Some physiology revision questions are also provided on the LMS. Note that the format of these physiology resources are no longer representative of the physiology assessment in this subject though. Unfortunately, no pharmacology questions were provided.

Textbook Recommendation:

Eizenberg, N., C. Briggs, C. Adams & G. Ahern. "General Anatomy: Principles and Applications". Sydney: McGraw-Hill, 2007.

I didn�t really use this book that much, except for the ADSLs from time to time. Other anatomy textbooks are provided through the LMS and are also there to provide support for the ADSLs. Pre-reading wasn't really examinable.

Silverthorn, D.U. "Human Physiology: An Integrated Approach". San Francisco: Pearson, 6 th Ed. 2013.

This textbook is absolutely essential, because pre-reading in physiology is examinable. I generally found it quite useful and easy to read so it�s worth having a copy anyway. Shouldn�t be too difficult to "find" (*cough*).

Lecturer(s):

Anatomy (28 lectures) Dr Peter Kitchener - Neuroanatomy (2 lectures) Assoc Prof Colin Anderson - Embryology (2 lectures) Dr Varsha Pilbrow - Systems anatomy (5 lectures) Dr Simon Murray - Vertebral column and back; upper and lower limbs (7 lectures) Dr Junhua Xiao - Visceral systems - gastrointestinal system, cardiovascular system, thoracic walls and diaphragm, lower respiratory tract, urinary system (9 lectures) Dr Jason Ivanusic - Upper respiratory tract; male and female reproductive systems (3 lectures)

Co-ordinator: Assoc Prof Jenny Hayes

Physiology (26 lectures) Co-ordinator: Prof David Williams - Neurophysiology, muscle physiology, digestive physiology, cardiovascular physiology, respiratory physiology, reproductive physiology (22 lectures) Prof Stephen Harrap - Renal physiology (4 lectures)

Pharmacology (11 lectures) Prof Alastair Stewart - Pharmacodynamics (5 lectures) Dr Michael Lew - Pharmacokinetics (4 lectures) Dr Graham Mackay - Autonomic pharmacology (2 lectures)

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 2 2015

Rating: 2.5/5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments:

I'll cut to the chase: this is definitely the worst Biomedicine core subject we'd had to date. So many enter with high hopes because for the first time we actually got to study anatomy and physiology - I went in with low expectations given what I had heard about this subject and somehow still walked out disappointed. The biggest disappointment is that they don�t really need to do that much to fix this subject up, but it seems like people are reporting the same problems every year and they're not really listening. In the end, I've decided to give this subject a pass overall because ultimately the staff are half way there with it. I initially marked the anatomy component out of 1.5, the physiology component out of 1.5, the pharmacology component out of 1 and the assessment out of 1, and found that I had given them all 50%. When one department got something right, the other managed to get it wrong, or half the area of study was taught well at the expense of the other half.

With BIOM20001 done and dusted most students will not find taking another 25 credit point subject like this one difficult or jarring to tackle. You'll have six lectures each week - this time, a morning and afternoon lecture every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. This was a welcome change from BIOM20001, and personally I did find it easier to maintain focus and keep on top of my work with the day's gap in-between. There's no regular workshop timeslot unless a lecturer replaces a lecture with a workshop, so in general there were less workshops during the semester - this may be a positive or a negative depending on how you learn. Like last semester, I found the workshops this semester helpful but I'll get into discussing those later. Four anatomy practicals and one physiology practical take the place of the CALs you had in BIOM20001. Overall, BIOM20002 is lighter in workload than BIOM20001 - it is definitely no more than two normal subjects worth in terms of demand (this makes sense if we consider BIOM20002 as a substitute for the equivalent Science subjects ANAT20006 Principles of Human Structure, and PHYS20008 Human Physiology) and so many people choose to (and successfully) study two selective subjects alongside this one during the semester (such as myself).

The way this subject is structured is that you'll generally study a system's anatomy or structure before moving onto its physiology; while pharmacology is sort of dumped in the middle of the subject around the time of the first mid-semester test. This involves very slight re-arrangements of the order of lectures offered in the Science equivalents ANAT20006 and PHYS20008. In that sense, BIOM20002 could make studying anatomy and physiology a bit better but the gain would not be significant. I have a feeling it is for this reason the staff call this subject an "integrated" subject but I think you can start to appreciate that simply re-arranging the lectures is not really integration. I think they finally started to yield on that point this year, although I'd say the level of integration was still insufficient. Anyway, I'll get into that more a bit later. From here on, I'll explore each discipline separately in this review.

Anatomy

I'll be honest: the thought of studying anatomy actually terrified me and it was for this reason that I wasn't looking forward to studying this subject at all. I didn't really know how much anatomy we had to learn, and I was anticipating that I'd have to learn and label all 206 bones and the 400 muscles in the body or something. If it's something concerning you, I'm glad I can reassure you that you won't be expected to know all that detailed information in this subject. If we take a look at the Science equivalent of this subject, the title is "Principles of Human Structure" - the key word there is principles. Of course, you'll still need to know a fair amount of specific details but where possible the staff try to relate that back to more general principles and clinical applications. In that sense, anatomy became much easier to swallow and enjoy. What did catch me off guard though was the fact that we had to learn about different parts of muscles and bones; I guess that was something I had overlooked. Now that I'm at the other side, I can safely say that studying anatomy actually wasn't that bad or difficult at all; while it still wasn't my favourite thing to study I have walked away with a newly found appreciation of anatomy, and I no longer fear subsequent studies in anatomy (perhaps I'm wrong in thinking this though LOL).

Your first anatomy lectures are taken by Dr Peter Kitchener where you'll explore neuroanatomy - more specifically principles of the central nervous system, its protection and fluid supply; and the somatic and autonomic (sympathetic and parasympathetic) peripheral nervous systems. Peter is a good lecturer, but his slides are very light in terms of content and while he doesn't speak particularly fast you'll need to write a lot of information down. I'm not sure if it was because of this but I found neuroanatomy rather confusing initially. What I'll say is that it will make a lot more sense as the subject progresses - a lot of the subsequent anatomy that follows requires a basic understanding of the underlying guiding neuroanatomy (which is why you do it first), and as you start to explore these areas you will become a lot more comfortable with the topics discussed in the first couple of lectures.

Much of this also applies for the embryology lectures, taken by Assoc Prof Colin Anderson. In this block you only get a chance go through an overview of the processes in embryology - the topic is rather complex and there's not a lot of time to get into things at a deeper level. Colin was also a good lecturer and at the time I thought these lectures were actually quite good. What I found over time though was that I was hopeless at memorising all the information. 😝 I'd probably advise regular revision on these two lectures - it's nothing exceptionally difficult but it can get rather tricky at times, making it difficult to remember answers when it comes to the assessment (more on that later). In particular, pay close attention to the diagrams and videos provided. Embryology (like anatomy as a whole, really) is especially visual so it's often only really possible to understand the processes once you understand how it happens visually.

Dr Varsha Pilbrow was up next covering systems anatomy (this includes the muscular, skeletal, articular (joints), vascular and integumental (skin) systems). This part of the subject is definitely the most "principles" grounded in this subject - you don't discuss specific regions of the body at all but rather the general principles of these systems throughout the entire body. There's still some stuff to memorise, but much like the former lectures you've had the goal of this block is to prepare you for the upcoming regional anatomy. Varsha's lectures were probably my favourite anatomy lectures. They're not at all difficult, but I'll warn you that she talks very fast and you'll need to write down a lot, so pay close attention.

Up until this point, all the lectures you've had have largely been grounded in principles. This changes as there is a shift in focus to regional anatomy and studying various systems in the human body. This is probably the area of anatomy most people think of when they hear the word anatomy. Many were looking forward to these lectures - I on the other hand was not, but as I said earlier I wasn't overwhelmed like I had anticipated because there's a lot of detail you don't go into, and where possible, the lecturers try to bring the specific details together into more general principles. At times though this can be difficult - as Peter said to us early on in the journey: "People often ask why something is so in my lectures; in anatomy there often is no why - it is what it is," - and having no underlying framework can make some things much more difficult to memorise due to the lack of context. When it comes to these lectures, I highly recommend changing the way you study. The earlier anatomy lectures can more or less be studied as normal, but these upcoming ones should be studied in a different context. You could take notes as you normally would, but sitting there sticking in the diagrams and writing in the labels is likely to become tedious and probably won't be helpful as you're not practicing your memory for the assessment. Instead, I used an online quiz program which allowed me to upload the images and blank the labels, and I'd regularly practice labelling the diagrams and writing the descriptions on my phone as I was travelling to and from university. Something along these lines - perhaps flashcards, or blanking out the labels and printing out several copies to practice every now and then - would be far more effective (as long as you don't neglect the description - I think some people got too good at just memorising labels and didn't actually understand what they were learning).

Dr Simon Murray teaches the vertebral column and back and the upper and lower limbs (you'll look at the bones and joints, muscles and movements, and nerve and blood supply). Despite being a good lecturer, this was the most difficult part of the course for me as my memory struggled to take in all the information. My advice is to really pay attention and focus on the general principles and then try to progressively build in all the detail. I also advise you to learn the specific detail Simon says is non-examinable - I was a bit annoyed by the fact that muscles of the forearm, dermatomes and myotomes all appeared on both the mid-semester test and exam, despite being told to 'understand the principles' (obviously very confusing to hear).

The bulk of the anatomy lectures are taken by Dr Junhua Xiao, who covers most of the visceral anatomy. She had a strong Chinese accent that was at times difficult for me to understand, but out of all the anatomy staff she was the best at telling us exactly what we had to know for the assessments. Personally, her block of lectures were actually the easiest for me to learn and study (perhaps by this point in time I had grown accustomed to my new mode of study and the things I was initially unsure of had started to click) - maybe the exception was the inguinal canal, but with a bit of persistence even this made sense without too much trouble. To be honest, I thought there were better anatomy lecturers but I regard Junhua as my favourite for a reason I'll get to a little later in this review. A small number of lectures were taken by Dr Jason Ivanusic, covering the upper respiratory tract and the male and female reproductive systems. His lectures were structured much like Junhua's, and he was also a decent lecturer.

To supplement your studies in anatomy, there are four anatomy practicals run during the semester. Going into this subject I didn't really know what to expect of these, and I was a little afraid I wouldn't cope. Thankfully (or perhaps not, depending on your stance) the practicals are purely observational and you don't have to worry about having to physically do anything yourself - samples are prepared beforehand, and you can handle them if you wish. Additionally, these practicals are not at all assessed - they are purely there for you to learn. In that sense, I got a great deal of benefit out of these practical classes. One bit of criticism is that the staff seemed like they always wanted to finish early, and I don't ever recall getting the whole two hours worth of lab time. Generally finishing a class early is a positive, but I felt at times teaching was needlessly rushed as a consequence.

Further supporting resources include access to the anatomy museum (which I can't comment on because I didn't use it), and the ADSL worksheets (ADSL stands for anatomy directed self learning). These worksheets predominantly summarise the content covered during lectures and give you the chance to practice your labelling skills. There will be some parts that seem like they have nothing to do with the lectures (this is especially true of the neuroanatomy ADSL) - even though ADSL content is technically examinable, don't worry about these parts because I never saw them come up again. The questions in the ADSLs tend to have a clinical focus and are probably good practice for some of the questions that may pop up on the anatomy exam. You'll be provided regularly with references to the anatomy textbooks to find the answers - it's this part of the ADSLs that makes them rather time-consuming - they look deceiving so allow yourself some time to work through them.

In terms of the lecture content, anatomy probably is the best taught component in the course. However, this doesn't mean their lectures are perfect. Probably one of the most annoying things about the anatomy lectures was the labelling convention - or lack thereof. Most of the time the structures to be discussed were listed on the side of the diagram, and there was no line to point to where that structure was. Instead, the lecturers usually used their cursor or pointer to point at the structure, which can be a bit ambiguous (especially if it's just a small groove or something) and if you were looking down writing or typing you essentially missed where that part was. Additionally, a lot of the descriptions of body parts and clinical significance was left off the slides (most of the time the slides were just diagrams) leaving you to have to write down copious amounts of information. This is particularly frustrating because as I'll get to a bit later, a significant amount of the anatomy assessment relates not so much to the labelling aspect of the subject but rather the descriptions and clinical significance.

Additionally, I was not impressed with the anatomy department's attitude towards this subject. Out of the three areas, the anatomy staff on the whole were the least willing to integrate their content with content provided as part of the other disciplines. They insisted on having their own end of semester exam, effectively killing any final opportunity to integrate physiology and pharmacology with anatomy. Furthermore, it encouraged us to study anatomy in isolation from the other disciplines - in SWOTVAC I was revising the anatomy of some structures and looking at their physiology only after the anatomy exam was over, and that just doesn't seem right to me. In addition, most of the lecturers just walked in and opened their ANAT20006 lecture slides, giving lectures as if we were in an anatomy-only subject. Sometimes a lecturer would say "this has implications for the physiology of this structure... but you'll hear about that in the physiology lectures" and just leave it hanging there for the other departments to deal with. To me, this was incredibly disappointing. Importantly, I point out that Junhua was the exception - she often went above and beyond to discuss some of the physiology relating to the anatomy she had just discussed (often she'd say "I know I'm only supposed to teach the anatomy but this is an integrated subject so I'm going to talk about the physiology for a moment..." - it almost sounded like the anatomy staff had been instructed not to delve into the physiology at all) and I'm really thankful she did that.

The anatomy department were also not particularly helpful in regards to the mid-semester tests. Rather annoyingly, feedback was vague and questions that were answered poorly in the tests were not handled well by the staff - instead there was an underlying accusatory tone in their review that the content was clearly explained in their lecture series and that it was our fault for not understanding. I understand the anatomy department's wishes to not release practice material for these assessments (and I don't have a problem with that) but things were not handled well when people needed help.

It is for these reasons I have given the anatomy component of this subject a 0.75/1.5. If these problems are to be fixed, I think the co-ordinators need to pay closer attention. I have a feeling many of these problems are borne out of the fact that Assoc Prof Jenny Hayes (the anatomy co-ordinator) doesn't actually take any of our anatomy lectures, and was only present for some of our anatomy practicals. I think this is a shame, because I've heard great things about Jenny from third year students. I hope it's something they'll look into.

Physiology

In summary, what the anatomy department did right the physiology did wrong, and vice versa. 😛 In fear of promoting breach of copyright and not being objective in my review, I'll just say that I agree with what others have said in their reviews of physiology (especially the lectures) in this subject. I really didn't want to believe them, but rather quickly I came to realise that it was the truth. Perhaps what I will say is that we often got very vague explanations and regularly fell behind (mostly this meant we had to follow up the parts we didn't get to on our own). If I had to pick out some exceptions, it would be neurophysiology and respiratory physiology, as well as renal physiology by Prof Stephen Harrap (although we got a very simplified message). People tried to give feedback regarding the quality of the lectures, but didn't have the heart to exactly be honest, and instead requested in a rather polite fashion that we "have more lecturers so that we gain different perspectives." This left David rather confused, because apparently in previous years this had been suggested and he took this on board but then those year levels complained that they didn't like those lecturers. I guess it's difficult to communicate that sort of message. 😕

On the positive side, the physiology department was by far the best at integrating the three disciplines taught in this subject together. For example, David watched all the anatomy lectures and regularly pulled slides from them in order to highlight certain points - it's a shame the anatomy department failed to reciprocate. Similarly, effort has been made to try and integrate physiology and pharmacology rather closely, although I'd say that they still have a lot of work to do in that area. If you compare the lecture schedules of BIOM20002 and PHYS20008 you'll see that some of the lectures in PHYS20008 are made to make way for the pharmacology lectures - in return, the pharmacology lectures now try to supplement the physiology we effectively missed out on but it wasn't done particularly well (it also means those removed topics do make their way onto the assessments). An integrated physiology/pharmacology question appeared on our exam this year, which was rather difficult but to me, a step in the right direction.

I think it might be worth spending some time talking about how to study physiology, given that like anatomy it requires a bit of a different strategy. Physiology is all about understanding the content - some memory work is necessary but it is secondary. Hence, the physiology department has invested a lot into creating the "flipped classroom" strategy to help the process become more active and rewarding (let's face it, lectures are a pretty passive way of learning). You'll be asked to do some assigned pre-reading before attending the lecture, which is examinable. Now, when I say examinable, I don't mean that some random line in the textbook is going to make its way onto your exam, so don't stress about having to take notes from the readings or anything like that. The reason you need to pre-read before the lectures is that the lectures are framed with the assumption that you have some basic knowledge of the concept to be covered already - basically if you don't pre-read you'll struggle to understand the lecture. For the neurophysiology lectures online pre-reading modules were provided as an alternative to reading the textbook. I usually did both but to be honest I thought the online pre-reading modules were better. Throughout the lectures you'll then be asked some practice questions (they're rather similar in style to the questions you'll see in your assessments) which you respond through your PRS clicker. You can probably appreciate that if you have no clue of the content beforehand you'll probably be guessing these aimlessly, effectively defeating the purpose of this system, which is to provide you with feedback and address any misconceptions as they arise. You are then encouraged to review the lecture afterwards in a way you see fit (the way you usually do it is probably fine). The PRS clicker costs $10 to hire and is a valuable learning tool over the course of the semester. However, it seemed like most people chose not to hire one or stopped bringing it to lectures *shrugs*.

The physiology practical takes place towards the end of the semester and relates to cardiovascular responses to exercise. You'll be asked to write a report (it's actually just answers to ten questions) worth 10% of your grade. My advice, again, is to take heed of the lecture advice (*cough*). People often lose quite a lot of marks in the mid-semester tests, so the report provides you with a good opportunity to boost your grade. As always, taking care when writing your report will prove beneficial. You get a rather silly lecture during the semester on scholarly literacy, which literally provides you with no help for this report at all (the content is largely irrelevant lol).

Concept checks for each topic are provided as revision on the LMS once they are completed in lectures. These are quite useful in testing your understanding, although sometimes you couldn't access the feedback to see where you went wrong. Hence, it's a good idea to take screenshots of your responses prior to submitting the test and then figuring out later with friends where you went wrong. Additionally, there was a tab on the LMS labelled "weekly quizzes" but this remained blank for the whole semester. :S Thankfully, you also have access to plenty of physiology revision material in preparation for assessments.

Most people tend to do quite poorly in the physiology section of the course, either because of the lecture reason (*ahem*) or due to the fact that they're not taking on board the advice of the staff and trying to learn the content more actively. I, on the other hand, found it to be a strength, and I consequently lost the majority of my marks on the mid-semester tests due to anatomy (damn failing memory XD).

In all, I've also marked physiology 0.75/1.5. While the lectures themselves were rather woeful (similarly reflected in the assessment), I appreciated the effort the physiology department was making in trying to actually integrate the three disciplines together and make up for the unwillingness of the anatomy department to do the same. In addition, the resources and feedback they provided were comprehensive and useful.

Pharmacology

The pharmacology component in BIOM20002 is quite small, being only 11 lectures in total. It's designed to cover both the basics of pharmacology so as to cover prerequisites for third year subjects requiring a basic knowledge of pharmacology, and cover some aspects of physiology that are not actually covered in the physiology component. However, as you can probably appreciate you barely get to scratch the surface of pharmacology, so if it's something you think you would like to pursue it's probably best to take PHRM20001 Pharmacology: How Drugs Work. Those studying PHRM20001 were probably at an advantage when it came to this part of the course because it seems like it was essentially repeated their pharmacology subject (and perhaps taught better); that being said as a non-PHRM20001 student I didn't find it overly difficult.

The first half or so of the pharmacology lectures are taken by Prof Alastair Stewart, who predominantly covers pharmacodynamics (the actions of drugs on the body). This is the part of pharmacology that ties in rather well with biochemistry, dealing with drugs binding receptors and their cellular responses. I didn't find it that interesting, and to be honest I felt this topic was needlessly drawn out (apparently in PHRM20001 it's done in just one lecture). The second half explores pharmacokinetics (the actions of the body on drugs) and is taken by Dr Michael Lew. On the other hand, I really enjoyed this part of the course and the connection between physiology and pharmacology became far more explicit. Michael was a very interesting lecturer (if not a bit eccentric) and explains things pretty well. In-between you'll have a couple of lectures dealing with autonomic pharmacology (drugs affecting the nervous system) by Dr Graham Mackay, re-inforcing some neurophysiology that may not have been explicitly covered in physiology. At the time I didn't engage too well with the lecture material, but upon reviewing them I actually did find them interesting. You'll also get some rather random lectures on drug discovery and development - to be honest, these were incredibly confusing and they felt largely unnecessary (in the end, I don't think we ever had a question in a test regarding these lectures).

As you would expect, a number of drugs are brought up in this section of the course (especially in Graham's lectures), but most are not explored in great detail - they're mainly used to highlight a key concept. Hence, the majority never appear in the assessment - the only one that ever came up was digoxin (in just one multiple choice question), which was the drug we covered in the most detail. I'd suggest learning the main drugs (e.g. digoxin, d-tubocurarine and aspirin) but not worrying too much about the rest. Instead, they tend to make up drugs, give you a set of properties about them and then ask you a series of questions. To be honest, I thought it was a pretty effective way of gauging whether or not a student had understood the key principles.

Two pharmacology SDLs (student directed learning tasks - yes, as you can see a variety of acronyms start to come up even though they mean the same thing 😛) are made available during the semester to support your studies in pharmacology: one relating to pharmacodynamics, and the other to pharmacokinetics. The pharmacodynamics program is extremely helpful, and probably explains pharmacodynamics far better than the lecture material does. It's that good that the lecturer himself uses the program during the lecture to help explain the concepts. The pharmacokinetics one, on the other hand, is slightly less useful, but worth your time nonetheless if you have enough time to do it.

With half the study area taught well, I think it's fitting to give this part of the subject 0.5/1. One of the big drawbacks of the pharmacology component is the lack of practice material - the first time I saw a BIOM20002 pharmacology question was in the mid-semester test which we didn't get feedback for, and then similar questions appeared on the exam. It might be worth seeing if the PHRM20001 students have anything that might be of use, if you're not a PHRM20001 student yourself.

Assessment

In addition to the physiology report, there are two 45 minute mid-semester tests, each worth 10% of your grade. The first test was held in week 6, covering lectures 1-30 (except the pharmacology lectures), and the second test in week 10, examining lectures 31-53 (plus any pharmacology lectures that fell in lectures 1-30). Most people fared alright for these tests, although they weren't as straightforward as they should have been. I initially had a negative and nervous gut feeling towards these tests when I learned in the first lecture this semester that the content and dates of these tests had yet to be decided. In the end this reaction was warranted.

The first mid-semester test is obviously more difficult to study for given the lack of a mid-semester break, but what made it more difficult this year was that the number of lectures examined was suddenly increased from lectures 1-20 for some reason. This test turned out to be really difficult, largely due to the very tight time constraint. Generally speaking assessments at university have marks equal to the number of minutes available - however mid-semester test 1 was out of 55 marks. We were told there were going to be 25 multiple choice questions and two extended matching questions (this appeared in the email just the day before the test) only to find on the day of the test (once we opened it) that there were in fact four extended matching questions. I was really disappointed that the staff weren't on top of this with us beforehand, especially given they had sent an email confirming what would be (or should have been) on the test only the day before. The content itself wasn't overly difficult if you had studied the content effectively, but with people failing to finish many didn't realise their potential on this test. For some reason, a lot of people forgot that normal cell osmolarity is 300mOsm, causing only 16% of students to get a certain series of questions correct. It wasn't discussed in a lot of detail, but it did come up both in lectures and in the pre-reading material, and the questions themselves weren't that demanding, so I was confused as to why so many weren't prepared for them.

Many complained about the lack of clarity about what was to be on the first mid-semester test, so the co-ordinators agreed they'd be more careful and put less questions on the next mid-semester test. However, the second mid-semester test (of the same format as the first mid-semester test) still had 49 marks on offer, making us wonder if they had actually listened to us at all. Due to the reallocation of lectures for the first mid-semester test, the second mid-semester test incorporated some digestive, cardiovascular and respiratory physiology, which had never before appeared on this test. Hence, no mid-semester test practice material was available for physiology. This test was easier than the first mid-semester test (aided by the fact that we had the mid-semester break to study) but again it was disappointing to see supposedly "non-examinable" content appear on the paper (physiology was the culprit this time). Most people did better on the second mid-semester test.

What made these mid-semester tests more confusing was the way in which we had to fill out the answer sheet - we had to use the back of the answer sheet for all questions, including the multiple choice questions. I have a feeling this may have confused some students, possibly adding to the rather poor performances of the cohort. Additionally, the cohort was not split up evenly into two venues like it usually is for these tests - in most cases the majority were placed on one venue with a small number of people then scattered across other venues (this seems to suggest venues were not booked adequately in advance). This was particularly annoying for the individuals placed in lecture theatres, especially those for the first mid-semester test who had to deal with the dimming lights in the Carillo Gantner theatre.

Prior to each mid-semester test was a "formative feedback" workshop class for revision. Before the first test David came in and tested us with a series of PRS questions that turned out to be really helpful. The second class, on the other hand, wasn't anywhere near as helpful. The anatomy lecturers came in to give us their vague feedback on how we performed on the first mid-semester test - I'm confused as to how that was supposed to help us for the second mid-semester test. Rather disappointingly, no physiology or pharmacology was covered in this session at all. This was despite a request for questions to be covered that day. I sent one in and was told that the purpose of the class wasn't to go through questions (highly confusing, I know) and despite the anatomy people finishing their feedback early the lecture was called a day and we did nothing for physiology and pharmacology. Another couple of feedback classes were scheduled on the last day of the semester in preparation for the exam, and these were similarly cancelled on us at the last minute. I wasn't impressed by this.

The anatomy department has a policy of not releasing any revision material (other than a sample question to understand the question style) and the pharmacology department failed to provide any practice questions this year. Physiology provided us with the physiology questions from the 2013 and 2014 mid-semester test 1, but as I said above nothing was available for mid-semester test 2. However, remember that you do have past exams you can work from if you go to the university library exam repository. After the mid-semester tests the physiology department also provided a breakdown of the marks, each individual's responses and the relevant percentages. Sometimes specific feedback on the questions were also provided. It became apparent a couple of physiology questions had been deleted from consideration for some reason.

In the exam period are two 2 hour exams, each worth 35% of your grade. Exam 1 covers only anatomy and contains 30 marks of multiple choice, 30 marks of extended matching questions and 60 marks of short answer written responses. In the end, this exam was not at all difficult. All of the questions were pretty straightforward and timing wasn't an issue. While you obviously needed to know your specifics, this exam had a focus on descriptions and clinical significances, which, in my opinion, are interesting and therefore far easier to remember and answer. The only negative was a question containing a poor quality printout, making the question difficult to answer. I hope this particular question will be reviewed. Other than that, my only other grievance was that supposedly non-examinable content (muscles of the forearm, dermatomes and myotomes) made their way onto this exam, but I think this was something I had semi-anticipated so I wasn't surprised to see it there. For some reason, there was minimal content relating to Peter, Colin and Varsha's lectures. Perhaps this is because they are meant to help you understand the anatomy that follows their lectures, but I think it would be more appropriate to see more of their stuff appear on the exam.

Exam 2 covered both physiology and pharmacology and only consisted of multiple choice/extended matching questions. Hence, much of the exam 2 revision material is no longer of the correct format, although I'd say it's still useful for revision. For some reason, I found the questions on this paper much more representative of what we learnt in lectures compared to what came up on the mid-semester tests, which was nice too see. There was also a (rather difficult) physiology/pharmacology integrated question at the end of the paper. Apparently it was a style of question the PHRM20001 students had been exposed to before, so it was a tad annoying to know that this wasn't extended to everyone in BIOM20002. This final question made the exam a little bit difficult to finish on time, but again it wasn't terribly rushed, and it was nice for them to finally integrate something in this subject assessment-wise.

Just like so many things in this subject, it seems like the assessment was also half way there. The mid-semester tests were a bit of a disaster, but the exams were prepared quite well. And with the exception of having an anatomy-only paper, I felt the physiology/pharmacology paper was starting to reflect the works of an integrated subject. Hence, I have awarded the assessment component of this subject 0.5/1.

General co-ordination, final remarks and tl;dr

As I keep on saying, if I had to sum up this subject, it was a subject that was done by halves - either one department did something right and the other wrong, or one half was taught well, or one half of the assessment was effectively managed. In much the same way, the co-ordination was half way there in getting this subject right.

In the end, BIOM20002 essentially confirmed the negative expectations I had going into this subject. I guess it was fated at our very first lecture, where the staff got the title of the subject wrong (they called it "Human Form and Function" -.-). In all honesty, the content itself is not that bad, but the journey wasn't made especially easy for us with adequate support. Ultimately, I too question the purpose of this subject - at the moment it still stands as a weird mix of ANAT20006, PHYS20008 and PHRM20001. Anatomy, physiology and pharmacology should be able to be combined and integrated effectively, but that just hasn't been achieved here - well, not yet, anyway. The problem is that the staff are coming from Science subjects and they're just trying to bring over as much stuff as possible from their respective courses so that they don't have to completely draw up a new course design, doing a small amount of integration to justify calling it an integrated subject. Biomedicine is set apart from Science in that we get subjects that allow us to get a taste of all the health science disciplines, and therefore keep the majority of majors open. I guess they have met that goal, but at the same time BIOM20002, at this stage, brings very little new stuff to the table, and I'm not convinced that it's enough to justify the unique subject code. It's such a shame, because BIOM20001 is such a unique, wonderful experience - I know Science students sort of don't get it, but truly it's a fantastic subject. On the other hand, I dare say that the Science students, with ANAT20006 and PHYS20008, get the better deal this time around.

With the same problems being reported over and over, I wonder why progress to improve this subject has been so slow. I can only hope that they'll keep edging closer to perfection, and that the journey will improve for the year levels to come. That's all I have to say for now. I wish you the best of luck for this subject. It's not at all difficult in terms of content - it's easier than BIOM20001 - but with the way it's run you'll need some strength to push through.