So what is all this about?
The points system
In the physiology course, before each colloquium, you start with negative points (around -14 points, not sure of the exact number). Each week you have the possibility to earn up to 4.2 points:
- 1 point from the in-person class
- 1.2 points from the weekly test
- 2 points from the weekly protocol
First of all, why would you care about these points? There's two reasons:
1. If you get to positive points (e.g. +3 points), those points will be added to your colloquium points. So if you happened to get 54 points (fail), you would have 57 points in this case (pass). Many students rely on these points.
2. If you have negative points, if you need to retake the colloquium, you will have an extra question in the colloq.
Let me give an example from this semester. Half of the semester wouldn't have passed the first colloquium of semester 3 if it wasn't for the weekly points. Isn't that crazy? In my opinion, it points to there being a misalignment between the material taught and questions in the colloquium.
Unfortunately, the points are only eligible for the first attempt. So if you don't do it on the first try (even if you had a sick note!), you won't be able to get any of the weekly points added to your colloquium points. So, as much as I hate to say it, pull up sick to the colloquium...
Now, how to get these points?
In-person class
Each professor does this differently (which I think is unfair). With some teachers, you need to learn the material beforehand and answer a question in class to earn the point. For example, my first professor in physiology (Māra Odineca) had a peculiar structure to the classes. She wouldn't teach things in class, but rather she'd always have a powerpoint presentation that just had questions about the lecture. For example, one slide could just look like this:
And you'd need to be able to list all of this:
And obviously, there's a lot of students per class. There's a few groups in each class, and not as many questions. That meant that each class, you would have to raise your hand immediately after the question pops up on the screen. Oh and you had to have your laptop closed, phone and ipad away. So you couldn't just check the answer.
Basically, each class you were fighting to get a point for the class.
For other teachers, e.g. for my current professors class, the rules are different. We just have to participate in class as we do tasks together, and answer some questions. Even if you can't answer, it's okay.
So basically, the game is rigged... It all depends on who's your teacher whether you'll get a point for each class or not.
Weekly test
Each week there is a weekly test that is done at the same exact time (for the whole semester). You have the possibility to get 1.2 points if you do well in the test. It has a 14 minute time limit.
But there are some problems with this test, too.
As you can imagine, when 300 people refresh the e-studies page at the same exact time, the server sometimes doesn't really handle it well... For example, earlier this semester as we were doing the weekly test, the page kept loading forever when progressing with the test. It has 10 questions and in between each question you load a new page. Some people were unable to do the test completely because the website was not loading for them.
When this problem was brought to light, our lovely semester leader had to go through the trouble of being in contact with the physiology department head in order to fix the issue. It took some back-and-forth, as she did not believe there were any technical issues at first, but finally she promised she would individually go through each students test and see if they really spent the whole 14 minutes unable to do the test, and then adjust the points. You can read more about this particular event in this blog post.
But yeah, it's unfortunate that the test has such a short time to complete it, as technical issues may impact the performance of students.
Weekly protocol
In the weekly on-site class, you will usually do some kind of experiment. Usually you're measuring some kind of data in class, or doing some kind of simulation. Then, you need to fill in a protocol with the results of the experiment. These protocols can be anywhere from 3 to 10 pages long... And after filling them out... my longest one was 16 pages. And it takes a while to fill them out. The whole semester has the same deadline for the protocol each week. For example, this semester it's Monday 6:00 AM. Yes, it's in the morning. Don't make the mistake of reading "Monday" and expecting it to be at 23:59 PM like every other course has it...
Anyways, you can either get 0, 1 or 2 points for each protocol. It all depends on the teacher, honestly. Some professors give only 1 point if you have a few mistakes. Other professors don't really care.
If you get 0 points (failed) for a protocol, you need to resubmit it corrected before the colloquium. No, you won't get any points for it, but you need to do it in order to do the colloquium.
This semester there was some issues with the protocols as well (surprise surprise). On Easter holiday weekend, the protocol submission deadline was changed 2 days before the deadline to Sunday 6:00 AM. That meant that many students, when trying to submit the protocol on Sunday, were unable to do so. This was obviously startling. There had been no information on this change of deadline provided to us. So again, our lovely semester leader had to contact the physiology department with the help of the group leaders, and they successfully negotiated a deadline extension to Monday 18:00. But again, there was no official information about this. No email. Nothing on e-studies. We had to rely on the semester group chat to inform us on the deadline change.
So, I would recommend submitting the protocols many days before the deadline, because you can't 100% trust the deadlines...
You should under no circumstances, share your protocols with someone else. If you get caught doing this, or using someone else's data, you will get -6 points. So, I wouldn't risk it.
What to study for the colloquium?
I recommend focusing on the protocols for the colloquium, because a lot of the questions are heavily related to them. So learn all the graphs, and possible calculations if there are any.
There are also scripts of the lectures, so it's good to read those while watching the lectures.
The colloquiums are difficult, I won't lie. Even though I felt like I had a relatively strong grasp on the material for this semester's first colloquium, I struggled. Luckily, I didn't have to retake (because 75% of those who did the retake failed that one as well...). Regardless, you should really prepare for these colloqs. The questions are very specific, and don't really test for your overall knowledge, but rather you memorising details.
Good luck on your physiology course. Thoughts and prayers to you...
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