CH932. Introduction to chemical aspects of biological systems.

This is another module with a linked book that you get access to before the course starts:

Chemistry by Raymond Chang.

Again, there are recommended chapters to read before you come to MOAC, and in your first week you will get an exam to assess where you chemistry knowledge is at. Like CH920 the exam is not one to worry about though, however, the more of the Chang chapters you understand beforehand the easier the following weeks will become.

This is a fairly intensive chemistry module, with a large amount of material to learn, but the lectures and the course book are sufficient to understand all you need.

Coursework is based on the Chang book and will really test your understanding of the subject. MOAC students are encouraged to work together and help each other understand the questions so do not worry if chemistry is not your strong point there will be someone around to help explain things.

Part of the assessment is a short presentation to the class to teach a new topic. I found this quite fun, and as we all only had 5 to 10 minutes of material each to share it was quite relaxed and enjoyable to do and to listen to.

For our year the module was spread over 10 weeks which did have the advantage that there was more time to reflect and understand the course material.

What would I do differently? I would have read more chapters of the Chang book repeatedly before coming to MOAC: the better you know the subject, the easier this module becomes. I also would have done the coursework questions to the module when there were quieter moments in workload form the other modules. The first term is VERY work intensive and it can be easy to take a night off if there is an opportunity to. The ten week format of the course can make it easy to put the 5 week courses first.

What did I enjoy? The part where we all took the lecture. One of the projects later on has a linked presentation so this was the first chance to practice talking to an audience.

What didn't I enjoy? My time management, I should have organised myself to do a few coursework questions each week so the workload was spread out.