Unit Synopsis
In this unit, you will study plant ecophysiology, describing in vivo responses of plants to the environment in both an agricultural and environmental context. You will gain an understanding of plant structure and function, including water relations, transport pathways, gas exchange, photosynthesis, respiration, secondary metabolism, nutrition and growth regulation.
Details
| Level | Undergraduate |
|---|---|
| Unit Level | 3 |
| Credit Points | 6 |
| Student Contribution Band | SCA Band 2 |
| Fraction of Full-Time Student Load | 0.125 |
| Pre-requisites or Co-requisites |
Prerequisite: minimum of 72 credit points Important note: Students enrolled in a subsequent unit who failed their pre-requisite unit, should drop the subsequent unit before the census date or within 10 working days of Fail grade notification. Students who do not drop the unit in this timeframe cannot later drop the unit without academic and financial liability. See details in the Assessment Policy and Procedure (Higher Education Coursework). |
| Class Timetable | View Unit Timetable |
| Residential School |
Compulsory Residential School View Unit Residential School |
Unit Availabilities from Term 1 - 2026
Term 1 - 2026 Profile
Attendance Requirements
All on-campus students are expected to attend scheduled classes - in some units, these classes are identified as a mandatory (pass/fail) component and attendance is compulsory. International students, on a student visa, must maintain a full time study load and meet both attendance and academic progress requirements in each study period (satisfactory attendance for International students is defined as maintaining at least an 80% attendance record).
Recommended Student Time Commitment
Each 6-credit Undergraduate unit at CQUniversity requires an overall time commitment of an average of 12.5 hours of study per week, making a total of 150 hours for the unit.
Assessment Tasks
| Assessment Task | Weighting |
|---|---|
| 1. Online Quiz(zes) | 10% |
| 2. Written Assessment | 25% |
| 3. Practical Assessment | 25% |
| 4. Online Test | 40% |
This is a graded unit: your overall grade will be calculated from the marks or grades for each assessment task, based on the relative weightings shown in the table above. You must obtain an overall mark for the unit of at least 50%, or an overall grade of ‘pass’ in order to pass the unit. If any ‘pass/fail’ tasks are shown in the table above they must also be completed successfully (‘pass’ grade). You must also meet any minimum mark requirements specified for a particular assessment task, as detailed in the ‘assessment task’ section (note that in some instances, the minimum mark for a task may be greater than 50%).
Past Exams
All University policies are available on the Policy web site, however you may wish to directly view the following policies below.
This list is not an exhaustive list of all University policies. The full list of policies are available on the Policy web site .
Term 1 - 2025 : The overall satisfaction for students in the last offering of this course was 33.33% (`Agree` and `Strongly Agree` responses), based on a 18.75% response rate.
Feedback, Recommendations and Responses
Every unit is reviewed for enhancement each year. At the most recent review, the following staff and student feedback items were identified and recommendations were made.
Source: in class feedback
Maintain residential school
The face-to-face learning and physical activity of the residential school is critical part of this unit, with the three day school to be maintained. Arrangements have been made to use another lab, better suited to the work.
A shift was made to 8LG lab rather than 9LG - which provided much better learning environment.
Source: through Moodle site
With the change in the Moodle GUI there was some confusion on where/how to access the weekly discussion forum.
In future offers I will require a response from all students in week 1 through the discussion forum to ensure everyone is 'on board'.
Cohort awareness of weekly discussion forum successfully raised.
Source: SUTE comments and unsolicited end of term emails
Residential school is essential
Agreed - the face-to-face interaction and the equipment use assist in understanding the material of this unit.
In Progress
Source: SUTE comments
Quiz assessment opening and closing dates should match that in the unit profile.
The quiz on a given weeks material is generally due on the Monday of the second week post class, but this is adjusted in the last weeks of term in order to finish within term. This will be clarified in unit profile.
In Progress
Source: SUTE comments
Cover all of the topic in the one recording.
This suggestion reflects disparity between students attending class physically and those watching recordings. I have been recording a weekly presentation made face-to-face to a small cohort, with the benefit that all material is fresh every offering. I need to look at how to break material while maintaining flow for the physical attendees. Separate recordings could be made for a series of concepts/topics, for use over multiple years, with the physical class evolved to a discussion.
In Progress
Source: SUTE comments
Do not require students to use the internet for Assessment 4
Assignment 4 is an open-book exercise that is undertaken in a 3 h period within a 24 h period, on-line. As an open-book, on-line exercise, internet use is assumed. Therefore, questions need to be designed that recognize internet resources, including AIs, are available during the assessment exercise. While recognizing bandwidth limitations, more internet/AI use will be explored.
In Progress
Source: SUTE comments
Include more pasture and grazing examples.
BOTN13002 services Science, Environmental and Agricultural students, with a balance in content/examples required to maintain relevance to all groups. Agricultural examples have tended to cropping rather than pasture, which can be addressed by inclusion of more pasture case studies.
In Progress
On successful completion of this unit, you will be able to:
- Describe and illustrate the principal physiological processes of angiosperms as an integrated system
- Apply knowledge of plant physiology in real life situations in agriculture, forestry and vegetation management
- Conduct plant physiology experiments, write experimental reports in the correct format and critique existing reports.
| Assessment Tasks | Learning Outcomes | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | |
| 1 - Online Quiz(zes) | • | • | |
| 2 - Written Assessment | • | • | |
| 3 - Practical Assessment | • | • | |
| 4 - Online Test | • | ||
| Graduate Attributes | Learning Outcomes | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | |
| 1 - Communication | • | ||
| 2 - Problem Solving | • | ||
| 3 - Critical Thinking | • | • | |
| 4 - Information Literacy | • | ||
| 5 - Team Work | • | ||
| 6 - Information Technology Competence | • • | ||
| Assessment Tasks | Graduate Attributes | ||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 10 | |