LIFESCI 3

Introduction to Molecular Biology

Description: Lecture, three hours; discussion, 75 minutes. Enforced requisites: course 2, and Chemistry 14C or 30A. Corequisite: course 23L (students must take 23L concurrently with course 3 if they do not plan to take course 4). Introduction to basic principles of biochemistry and molecular biology. Letter grading.

Units: 4.0
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Overall Rating 2.7
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Clarity 2.6/ 5
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Helpfulness 2.9/ 5
Most Helpful Review
Spring 2016 - Dr. Sellami co-taught this with Dr. Campbell, and they each taught half of the course. I believe she handled all of the logistics and grading, though, so the only part of this review that applies to Dr. Campbell is the "Lectures" section. As People I didn't go to their office hours, but they seemed nice. A lot of communication occurred through the Piazza discussion forums, and that was a great resource through which the students, TAs, and LAs (undergraduate assistants) collaborated to get questions answered. The professors didn't answer as many questions as they could have, but they provided input on our most pressing questions. Materials Launchpad: $120 if you buy from the company *Don't buy/rent the textbook. You'll have readings, but you won't be studying from them. If you do want it, rent it from Amazon for $20.* Grading Midterm 1 100 Midterm 2 100 Final 200 Discussion 100 Clickers 78 Reading 100 Launchpad 100 Straight scale (90=A, 80=B, 70=C). No curve, but "I rounded generously (so more than mathematically correct...) in students' favors as much as I can justify[.] generally, if you were less than half a percent off from the better grade, you got the better grade[.]" Lectures She made lectures mandatory through clicker questions. You got 1.5 points just for inputting answers, and another 1.5 for getting three right (0.5 each). There were usually a lot of questions, which served as useful checkpoints. That being said, she was good at engaging us and speaking clearly. Dr. Campbell, not so much. He was your stereotypical professor who had little charisma. I tried giving him my full attention, but his voice was just too soft and disengaging. They both used PowerPoint uploaded onto CCLE, so a laptop was helpful. Discussion Instead of having a TA drone at you for 75 minutes, we did worksheets in groups, which allowed us to stay engaged and work at our own pace, making the material easier to digest. Homework Launchpad was a pain. A typical weekly assignment consisted of textbook pages and a quiz, videos and a quiz, and a simulation. They typically took a couple of hours per week, and were always due on the first day of class for the week. Even if there was a midterm on Monday, it would still be due then. I'll admit that the simulations made some concepts clearer to me. Exams 50 MC for the midterms, 100 MC for the final. Although there were a fair amount of memorization questions, the others were tricky because she focused on applying the experiments that we learned about. For example, we all know that DNA is the genetic material rather than protein. In class, we'd learn about the experiment that led to that conclusion. On the exam, she would describe an experiment like that one, but change the results so that they would suggest that protein was the genetic material instead. That would be the correct answer. So, you cannot rely on just pure memorization. The medians are listed below. Midterm 1: 82 Midterm 2: 84 Final: 152 (76%) Tips - Don't read the textbook thoroughly. It won't help for the exams. Just do enough to ace the reading quizzes. - Only study from lecture and discussion. The discussion worksheets always have questions that will appear in another form on her exams. - Sometimes you'll overthink a question, but most of the time you won't be. The wording is very important. tl;dr Dr. Campbell was a painfully average lecturer, but the first midterm, which covered his part of the course, wasn't too difficult.
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