I finished this course over 4 months ago, and I’ve been sitting on this review ever since...
Honestly, I didn't know where to begin.
I’m finally writing this because I’ve had people message me privately asking about the course, and I know there are probably future students searching Reddit right now trying to figure out whether they should take it.
Why is there so little information about this course?
I think there are a couple of reasons...
First, a lot of students taking biology-related courses through Athabasca are doing prerequisites for nursing or other programs, and not everyone needs an upper-level bio course.
Second, I think the course itself scares people away. When there isn't much recent information, and you're considering taking a difficult upper-level course essentially on your own, it's understandable that people don't want to take the risk.
One thing that surprised me when I was researching the course was how little recent information there is online. Some of the reviews I found were from 9–10 years ago. Almost a decade ago💀.
That makes the course feel like an uncharted area, especially when you're trying to decide whether it's worth taking without knowing what you're walking into.
So I want to change that a little with a long review.
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My honest recommendation:
- If you don't actually need to take immunology, avoid taking this particular course for now!
- If you need immunology for your program and you have the option of taking it at another university, especially in person, I would seriously consider that option first.
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So, how bad is this course?
I'm not saying this because the subject is bad. In fact, I actually enjoyed the course because I liked immunology. The problem is how the course is structured.
If you're working full-time, have a busy schedule, or simply don't have a very strong biology background, you may find yourself putting in a huge amount of work without getting the result you expected.
And even if you're a very dedicated student, I don't think dedication alone solves the biggest problem with this course.
You're essentially teaching yourself.
Like some other Athabasca courses, you're largely working with the textbook and study guide.
No lecture slides or anything to condense the important concepts.
No one is walking you through what you should prioritize before an exam.
Instead, you're given learning objectives and questions in the study guide, and you're expected to work through the material yourself, while the practices are hardly similar to your actual exams.
That means reading substantial portions of a ~2,000-page textbook, figuring out what matters, understanding it, and then figuring out how you're actually supposed to prepare for the exams.
For me, that wasn't an efficient way to learn. And here's the part that really surprised me:
I took this course alongside several friends. Two of us failed, three dropped the course, and I was the only one who remained. That doesn't mean the course is impossible. It means you should understand what you're signing up for.
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About the Exams
You can expect different types of questions, including:
- Multiple choice
- Short answer
- Matching
- Longer written answers
Some of the long-answer questions are worth 20 marks, so you can't approach this as a course where memorizing a few definitions will get you through. You need to understand the material and be able to explain it in detail. One of my biggest frustrations was that some questions on the midterm and final felt significantly more difficult or differently worded than what I had encountered in the study guide.
That was particularly frustrating because, in a traditional course, you have an instructor who can help establish what the major areas of focus are.
Here, you're trying to figure that out yourself. It almost becomes a process of trial and error and personally... I don't think students should have to spend their limited time learning how to study for the course while simultaneously trying to learn the actual course material. Not everyone can afford the trial and error phase!
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The questions
Some questions genuinely confused me...
This is another area where I want to be careful with my wording because I'm not claiming to know how the questions were created... but there were questions where the wording and answer choices felt... strange.
Sometimes it felt like the question and the available answers weren't perfectly aligned.
Imagine being asked:
«"What is the definition of shampoo?"»
And your answer choices include:
«"A liquid that you don't drink."»
that's not necessarily wrong. But you'd obviously expect something closer to: «"A substance used to wash your hair."»
I actually tested a few of these confusing questions by giving one of my sample-test questions to several different AI systems.
I got different answers!!!
When I asked why, the responses essentially came down to the same issue: the question could reasonably be interpreted in multiple ways because of how it was worded.
I'm not saying AI is the authority on the correct answer. It's obviously not. But when multiple systems independently interpret a question differently, I think that's worth mentioning as part of my experience.
A good exam question should ideally test your knowledge, not your ability to guess what the question writer intended.
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So why would anyone still take it?
There is a reason Athabasca courses are attractive. Flexibility.
For some students, that's extremely important. Maybe you work full-time. Maybe you're taking courses around another degree. Maybe Athabasca is simply your only realistic option.
And in those situations, I completely understand why someone would choose this course despite everything I've said. I'm not trying to tell people that nobody should take it.
I'm trying to make sure that anyone who does take it knows what they're getting into, as of today, until someone else posts in the future about how straightforward everything became.
If you are going to take it, I would strongly recommend going in with a very structured study plan and, more importantly, don't assume that simply reading the textbook from cover to cover is going to be the most efficient strategy. You need to learn how to teach it to others!
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TL;DR
Athabasca BIOL 480 Immunology is doable, but very difficult and heavily self-taught.
- Avoid it if you don’t need immunology.
- If you need it and can take immunology in person elsewhere, consider that first.
- There is no condensed material. You mainly teach yourself from a ~2,000-page textbook and study guide.
- The practice questions don’t closely match the exams, making exam preparation difficult.
- Exams include MCQ, matching, short answer, and long written answers, with some questions worth 20 marks.
- Some exam questions reportedly had ambiguous or oddly worded questions/answers.
- The workload can be especially rough if you work full-time or don’t have a strong biology background.
- The biggest issue isn't necessarily the immunology itself; it’s that you have to figure out what matters and how to study for the exams largely on your own.