A course that directly teaches you about the scientific method and how to practice good science! BIOL 140 is a lab course that teaches you how to collect data, set up experiments, and do introductory statistics on cool organisms!
format of the course
I took the course 3-4 years ago, so the format might have changed; however, I suspect they kept it mostly the same. Classes are run like small tutorials that occur once a week for 3 hours. These classes were very interactive and quite interesting. We’re broken down into groups of 3-4 on the first day and assigned study organisms for the term (I got the beetle). Assignments in this course were all written: literature searches, worksheets, lab reports, and paper writing. They end-goal was to design an experiment regarding our organism and doing a final write-up on our findings. Personally, we looked at whether beetles prefer a wet or dry environment by looking at the duration of time they stayed in a particular environment.
For interests sake, we set this up by filling a petri dish half with dry soil and half with wet soil. We then put the beetle at the boundary where the two soils met, and allowed 30 seconds to pass to reduce its stress levels. We then measured for 2 minutes for how long the beetle stayed at each location. We then tabulated these results, ran some statistical analyses, and then wrote up a report and presentation.
In the latter half of the course, we went to a nearby forest to learn how to identify different plant species and how to sample parts of the forest.
GPA 🙂 or 🙁
This course is not that stressful, but the marking for the written assignments and presentations are quite harsh. I remember they gave us a sample written assignment to mark on our own, and the actual mark that the sample assignment was scored was much lower than the mark my peers and I assigned. This being said, the final exam was ridiculously easy (I suspect on purpose), and the averages aren’t that bad in the end. Due to COVID-19 the latest averages are heavily inflated, thus I will provide an older distribution from when classes were in-person. The average was 77 in 2019w term 1.
BIOL 140 Grade Distribution. Credits: ubcgrades.com
Verdict? to take or not to take
I would take this course if you are planning on going into a life-science major as this is a prerequisite for most of them. Otherwise, this is a lot of work for a 2 credit course, and you will be exposed to a more in-depth learning of the scientific method in whatever major you choose later on.