An interesting course about the various physiological systems from a comparative point of view. BIOL 364 covers the fundamentals of the cardiovascular, respiratory, and osmoregulatory system and temperature regulation.
format of the course
BIOL 364 consists of live recorded lectures and recorded office hours! Piazza and the Zoom chat are also helpful avenues when communicating with the teaching team as they are pretty thorough with answering the questions. The mark weighting consists of two midterms and a final exam. All the questions on the exams were open-ended essay questions. Midterms were 3 questions (400-800 words each, 50 minutes) and finals were 6 questions (400-800 words each, 2.5 hours).
Unfortunately, there was much grief over the exam format as historically the exams used to be completely multiple choice. However the open format was to curb cheating as invigilation is difficult over zoom. People’s main gripe was with the subjective marking in a science course, which given the exam style is hard to minimize. I suspect things will go back to multiple choice when in-person classes begins as they are easier on the students and TAs.
GPA 🙂 or 🙁
When you’re taking the course it will feel like a GPA dropper because of the incredibly time-crunched midterms. However, with new weighting schemes implemented (dropping the worst midterm if you do well on the final exam) and the final exam being much generous in terms of time, the class average ended up being quite high and in line with the historical averages. The class average was 79.
BIOL 364 GRADE DISTRIBUTION. Credits: ubcgrades.com
verdict? to take or not to take
If you’re really against subjective marking and dreading getting your mark back after every exam due to not knowing how you did, I would not take this course. If you want an interesting course on physiology that isn’t incredibly in depth, I would take this course. Physiology enthusiasts should consider taking CAPS 301 which is a year-long course covering mammalian physiology.
