LSM2241 Introductory Bioinformatics

[05012013 EDIT] I took this module in year 2010/2011 Semester 2. From what I know, the lecturers are different now so this review might not be so relevant now. There is no more miniproject and the lectures are given by one lecturer now.

I know it's a little late to be doing reviews now, considering that bidding is already over and school has already started. But I can always benefit other people in future right? Okay so bioinformatics review.

I got my first and only B- for a core module and yes, it was for bioinformatics. Took this because we had to choose either bioinformatics or ecology. And eschewing anything outdoors and field trips and writing essays, I chose bioinfomatics for the computer lab sessions. It was the worst ever decision, really.

Content: I never learnt anything out of the entire module. Apart from getting a Wizfolio account which does automatic citations for my lab reports and using the library system to get research papers, that is. I didn't understand anything at all. The lectures were really very technical and about programming and databases. Can't remember much about the content because there probably wasn't much in the first place. Not forgetting that the lecture is early in the morning at 10am, I think I often dozed off or started talking to people beside me.

Lecturers: I lost count of how many lecturers we had. I think we had 4 lecturers in total, which made understanding really difficult. Because they were all foreigners except one. When I finally got used to how one lecturer spoke and decided I can understand him, he finishes his lectures and I can't decipher the next lecturer's words again. But not to worry, the lectures are webcasted so you can re-play and re-play until you understand. I didn't do that at all. So maybe that's why I only got a B-.

Assessment: We had one presentation (10%), one miniproject (45%). The miniproject is really a misnomer. It's a mega project literally. But don't worry. You just need to do mostly admin work like using excel. It was more like an excel crash course for me than anything else. We started our project super early hoping we could be ahead of other groups and finish early to write our report. But our Teaching Assistant (TA) was really useless and unhelpful. We kept approaching her for help and each time we asked her the same thing, she gave us a different answer. In the end, we kept on re-doing and re-doing and re-re-re-doing the same thing all over again. My group and I spent about 70% of our time in the semester on this project, meeting online every night till 4am and regularly in school and yet we got the worst grades of the cohort. If you're taking this, I suggest you don't start so early. Bioinfo was the worst module that we ever took. I learnt nothing out of the project. I repeat, NOTHING at all! And there's the final exam, which was open book. But suffice to say, open book usually means killer questions. The notes did nothing to help.

Lab sessions: Presentation were held during these lab sessions. And beware of the Q&A sessions at the end, or sudden interruptions by the lecturer to question your slides. Lab sessions were a real waste of time, I think they were 4 hours long, and they mostly let us do the 'lab' report in the lab for most of the time, and then start going through at the end, like 30 minutes before the lab ended. They always claim that we need to know how to do the lab report to do the miniproject. But.. we never used a single thing we did in the lab on our miniproject! Quite a few people had to leave early for lessons at other places, like yours truly. So we never once got to listen to the answers for the lab reports. Answers were uploaded but isn't the explanation more important?

Omg my blood started boiling towards the middle of this review. Thinking of how we suffered and still got such grades. Not that I was expecting an A, but still.. So if you're intending to take this, I suggest you either abandon your friends and join a group of smart people for them to do the work for you while you just claim credit. This way you learn nothing as well, but you get a good grade since the final exam doesn't really count for much. There isn't much to study for this module either. I can't say much about ecology, but I gather nothing can be worse than what I have been through. I'm sure Amanda and Joanne will agree with me. And this was the first time ever that I sat in a lecture and didn't understand what the lecturer was saying at all. This never ever happened even for the level 3000 modules or the only level 4000 tumor biology module I took. This is getting too long. I hope this review helps you choose wisely. If you have the habit of reading reviews in the middle of the sem like I did, when you're already taking the modules then.. all the best to you(: