[davey]

Health Sci 1AA3 is the biochemistry class that nurses have to take first year. This class had no actual lectures, and it was taught through lecture slides posted online. Every week, we had a two hour tutorial where we went through what we learned from the learning objectives and had a short quiz. Your tutorial mark counted for 20% of the course and was given based on participation, professionalism, attendance and how well you did on your quizzes. The quizzes were ridiculously easy at times and were put in place just to make sure you were keeping up with the lectures. Also, within the lecture slides, there were clinical scenarios (1-3 per lecture) which required you to look up information (mostly from the text). These were also discussed in the tutorials and were tested on the midterm and the final.

The midterm was worth 25% of your grade and covered lectures 1-5, while the final was worth 55% and covered the whole course with an emphasis on lectures 5-10. All testing was done in multiple choice format.

The lectures in general were very concise and covered topics such as DNA, proteins, lipids, carbohydrates and the metabolic processes behind these substances. I would say 50% of the information was review from grade 11 and 12 biology, while 50% was new information that I had not known previously. The course encouraged students to grasp the general knowledge behind these topics, rather than picky details. Overall, I found the course to be pretty easy compared to some of the other nursing classes, and I spent the least time on this class out of all my mandatory courses.