CN1101 Chemical Engineering Principles and Practice I is a new module and I was part of the first cohort in AY17/18 to do this module. I would say it is a really good initiative for the chemical engineering department to change the syllabus and I'll explain more about the module below.
Assessment10% Studio Attendance and Participation
10% Chalk and Talk
10% Studio Case Studies
25% Compilation and Presentation of Student Portfolio
45% Tests (3 Continual Assessments, Open Book)
(NO FINAL EXAM)
Lecturer: different lecturer every lecture.
Tutor: Dr Saif Khan
Comments
It was a very new kind of module for me. It was very different from the usual lecture and tutorial style of modules and there are pros and cons in this. The Chem Eng Department created a new textbook for this module which was a good initiative in my opinion, although there is room for improvement. The module covered foundational Chem Eng concepts like mass/energy balances and fluid mechanics.
We had to do a pre-studio and post-studio quiz (consisting of 8-10 mcq questions) every week on IVLE. They were no graded and were there just to see whether we understood the topic better after the end of the studio session.
Lecture
Lecture was held once a week on Mondays from 1400 - 1600. The lecture will usually start off with a review of the experiment done last week, followed by explanations for the studio quizzes and then an introduction to the topic to be taught during studio. Lectures were done well, I guess, just that the lecture slides are only uploaded after the lecture and not before (which doesn't really make sense to me). The lectures were not webcast-ed so I attended all 11 lectures.
Lab/Studio
The studio sessions (actually just labaratory sessions, studio is just a fancy name) were 4 hours long and mine was on Tuesday, from 0900 - 1300. Our studio sessions usually start off with doing the experiment itself and then, analyzing the data collected using different softwares. We were pre-allocated into groups of five for the studio.
My tutor doesn't exactly tell you what the expected result for the experiments would be and it was up to us to find out. This was not a problem with the simple concepts in the beginning of the module but as the concepts got more complex, we were pretty lost towards the end since we weren't sure of what to expect (but I guess this is part of the learning experience). However, I really Prof Saif's way of explaining the concepts to us at the end of studio sessions as he is really clear and succinct.
We had to write a 2 page lab report for each experiment and this report has to submitted at the end of the week.
At the end of every studio, we would have a chalk and talk session. Each cluster (about 25 people) will gather together and then, someone from each group will come up to the front to do a 5 minute presentation on a question asked by our prof. So, this is pretty spontaneous and the questions asked are related to the previous week's topic. We had to present twice throughout the whole semester, one being graded and one being a test run. I was pretty nervous about this initially but as the weeks went by, I got closer to everyone in the cluster and it wasn't really that awkward talking to people that you already know and are close to. Prof Saif was very helpful too and gave constant prompts during our chalk and talk so that we can do well.
Tutorial
The tutorial was actually conducted by the Centre for English Language Communication (CELC) and was on weeks 1, 6 and 7. The week 1 tutorial focused on the chalk and talk while weeks 6 and 7 focused more on our lab reports. My tutor for this tutorial was Dr Misty So-Sum Wai-Cook and she gave very good feedback with regards to our chalk and talk and lab reports. She was very clear in her explanations too.
The problem here is that the main review on our lab reports and how to write good lab reports was done on Week 6 while we have already written 5 lab reports in weeks 1 - 5 (and all reports are graded under the portfolio portion). So, yeah. That was kinda weird.
Furthermore, we do not have ACTUAL tutorials that sum up what we have learnt in lecture and studio and there are no tutorial questions to practice etc. So, we sometimes think we know what we are supposed to know until we take the continual assessments and realize that there are a couple of things that we do not know.
Tests
There were 3 continual assessments held on Saturdays of weeks 4, 8 and 11. Each assessment consisted of 15 MCQ questions and were all open book examinations. The first 2 assessments were 1 hour 15 minutes long while the last one was 1 hour 30 minutes long. The test questions were way more complex than what we learnt in studio but since it is MCQ, you know, you can always just choose the most suitable option even when you cannot obtain that final answer.
Expected Grade: A
Actual Grade: A+
Overall, it was a good experience although I felt the way this module is being taught could be improved a little.
Stay tuned for more updates.
- Alan
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