MBG * 3350 – Laboratory Methods in Molecular Biology I F,W (1-8) [0.75]

Do NOT take this course with Bendall. You have to pass both the lecture and lab portion of the course in order to pass. For context, I got 85% in the lab portion and 49% on the lecture portion because his exams are completely bogus. You have an hour and a half to write the exams and the format is all application and not enough time is given for the amount of work he is asking for. I ended up dropping the course because it was so bad. The exam was take home but time limited and completely inaccessible.

Amanda van der Vinne (the lab coordinator ) is the worst lab coordinator I have ever come across in the 4 years I went to the University of Guelph. She is absolutely awful, takes marks off for small things, and does not have detailed rubrics at all. Avoid her at all costs. She not only is a bad lab coordinator but also a mean person, and does not care one bit about the students. The course is not bad in itself, and the lab techniques used are useful. I had to take the course for my major. I wish I did not have to. But the course is not too bad other than the horrible lab coordinator. My TA was nice though, but Amanda marks the other assignments , other than the weekly lab things.

HATE this class. It is so incredibly disorganized. The labs themselves are fine, but you rarely know for sure what you will be doing in lab or if the lab instructions are actually correct. The TAs are great, but a lot of the time they don\'t know information about the class that well either. First midterm was ridiculous. 50 minutes for like 8 pages of written work, doesn\'t sound bad but it was insane. Really low averages. There is so much work for this class, its totally worth the 0.75, should even be worth a full credit. Over all, if you don\'t need to take this course, don\'t!

Fantastic course. If you're interested in future research in molecular biology, you'll learn a host of useful techniques and theory that'll be useful down the line. Take it in the summer if you can since there's no final, only 3 quizzes and a few lab reports. The last 4 assignments (qPCR, GMO assignment, etc) were marked a little harder than the 2 big lab reports I felt, but overall it was fair and not hard to do well in.

AWESOME CLASS!!!! There is lots of lab but they do not usually run for the whole time and they are very interesting!

I really enjoyed this course! The lab time was very beneficial for future research projects. The lab TAs were really helpful. The lectures were fairly useless.