Bionanotechnology - BIOE 112

My first post will be about the hands-down easiest class that I have taken at Rice so far. Bionanotechnology (BIOE 112) is a joke. Not only is this class an easy A, it is an easy A+ for anyone that has ever taken a science class in high school or college. For as far back as I can look in Esther’s course evaluation database, 100% of people have received A’s in the course. I haven’t been able to find any class that even comes close to that, other than freshmen seminars.

Fifty percent of people say that the course load is lighter than average. That means fifty percent of people blatantly lied. That number should be at least 100%. The entire course consisted of only four assignments and two short quizzes. The quizzes were six questions long and were either multiple choice or short (one word) answers. There were “required” readings, but those proved to be entirely useless and unnecessary for both the quizzes and every other assignment in the class.

The four assignments were two oral presentations, one open-book test, and one newsletter article. The oral presentations took about an hour to prepare for, including research and creating the powerpoint, and are supposed to last at least eight minutes each. I don’t like public speaking, so my presentations were only five minutes and two minutes long, but I still got ten-of-ten and nine-of-ten points on those assignments respectively.

The test was open book and open note. Everyone received perfect or close to perfect scores on the test. The test has an optional extra credit essay with the prompt “Create a bionanotechnology long essay exam question and answer it.” Basically that meant you could write about literally anything and earn extra credit points for it.

The final assignment was to write an article describing the research of one professor at Rice. This was the one assignment all semester that required more than an hour of work. However, this assignment was also not really graded. Anyone that turned in anything that met the requirements was given a good grade.

Finally, anyone that wanted to further boost their grade had the opportunity to attend extra credit lectures. This really wasn’t required because it’s not possible to get higher than an A+ in a class. With these extra credit opportunities, it was pretty much impossible to get less than an A in the class.

The one downside to the class is that attendance is mandatory. The professor isn't the best lecturer, so it can get boring at times. Also, the class was taught at the BRC, which is a long walk, especially from the north colleges, making it even harder to get motivated to go to class.

I would recommend this class for everyone. It is a DIII class, but science majors who already have enough DIII credit should still take it. It is actually pretty interesting, and since Rice's Richard Smalley discovered the buckyball, learning about it will actually teach you a bit of Rice’s history.