Experimental Design and Data Analysis for Biologists

Feedback from previous Course Survey            2021

Student ratings (out of 5)                                    
The materials provided helped me to understand what was required to succeed in
this course.                                                                                                                       4.51                                              The organisation of this course helped me learn.                                                                  4.49
I found the workload was appropriate to the level of the course.                                       4.36
I found the assessments appropriate for the course.                                                            4.36
Where I sought feedback on my assessments, I found it helpful.                                         4.49

Helpful features
1. Lecture slides were informative and easy to follow, along with a good explanation of each slide.
2. The 309 lab manual has been extremely useful in understanding the course content.
3. Very good organisation of the course, small frequent quizzes and labs with recap sessions at the end     helped a lot!
4. The lecture content order seemed good.
5. A lot less stressful than the assessments for 209, I really appreciated the types of assessments being       changed to smaller but more frequent assignments. Helped me learn more as I was less stressed.
6. The online lab tests were good, they sound a lot better than a big lab exam, and they helped me learn the lecture material throughout the term rather than waiting for exam time.
7. The nature of the internal tests seemed fair as it would've been very difficult to memorise all the R coding, especially as it comes later with continual use.

What to change? (Action/response indicated in bold)
The lectures where well organised but the lecture slides online had important parts of it
deliberately left blank. This makes it a bit harder to go back through notes and reinforce
learning.
This is deliberate, because research shows that if you make notes and write things down
(rather than just listening or reading), you retain the information better. However,
writing too much down during a lecture can prevent you from having any time to stop
and think. As a compromise, we give much of the long text and figures in the
powerpoints, but leave blank the key words for you to write them down yourself to help
you remember them.
But the labs we worth so few % and had tasks that were either extremely simple or extremely
difficult no in between. I think it would perhaps be better to have a series of labs over the
course to learn information as you go, or two weekly quizzes worth 5% or maybe even less
just because they really help you learn as you go.
We already have approximately two-weekly tests worth 5%, so not sure how to address
this. Lab tests have some easy questions so that hopefully nobody gets zero, and then
progressively more difficult questions. The R code to answer them always comes from a
previous lab.