I took this course in 2010 with Dr. Blimkie. This is a mandatory second year course for Kin students.
Throughout the term, we studied several topics including pre-natal development, prenatal assessment techniques, postnatal assessment techniques, how to analyze growth charts and trends as well as age + sex-related patterns in growth. The course started off slow and dry, but it got more interesting with time. Dr. Blimkie offers the option to buy all the notes in a course pack which you can purchase from the Underground or you can print the notes from online. Most people choose to purchase the course pack.
Dr. Blimkie’s lecturing style is an acquired taste and takes some getting used to. At first, it seems he is saying a lot per slide and that there is simply no way to fit everything he says on the page. With time, you will realise, he says the same thing over and over again for a few pages in a different way each time. This is by no means a bad thing, for it reinforces the big concepts and it makes studying easy.
The course outline is as follows:
Case Study Assignment - 20%
Mid-Term - 35%
Final Exam - 45%
The work load for this class is not very demanding. The assignment takes a few hours to complete. For the mid-term, Dr. Blimkie emphasized studying the big concepts and ignoring what he calls “minutiae”. Thus, the mid-term was not difficult and the class average was around 87%. I personally found the exam to be a bit harder than the midterm because there was not that much material to study, and there were between 70 and 100 questions on the exam. That meant small concepts and details were tested too. This being said, the exam was by no means a “killer”. My mark still managed to stay the same before and after the exam.
Overall, this course is an introductory course to Kin 3U03 and Kin 4Q03 which Dr. Blimkie teaches as well.
For those of you interested, the link to course outline for 2011-2012 is posted below.
http://www.science.mcmaster. ca/kin... _Outline.pdf
