Module Review: GEQ1000 (AY18/19 Semester 1)

GEQ1000 Asking Questions is a 4 MC general education module that every NUS student (except for medicine, law, dentistry) have to take. Basically, this module looks into 6 different faculties and we will study how these 6 faculties ask and answer questions. This module is compulsory satisfactory/unsatisfactory, meaning that we'll just get a pass or fail in our grade book and it won't affect my CAP. As a result, it wasn't a stressful module for me haha. 

Assessment

14% Forum Posts
36% Class Participation (Yes, you heard me right)
36% Online Quizzes and Assignments
14% Final Reflection Paper 

(^This will likely change for future semesters.)

Lecturer: 
Various lecturers from the 6 different faculties

Tutor: 
Dr Seah Kar Heng

Textbooks/Readings

Each faculty would have their own readings but it's not a lot. Ain't that bad to read them as they will help in answering the quiz questions. 

Lectures

Lectures are entirely online. They are supposed to be watched from Week 1 to Week 12 but everything was uploaded from the beginning (if I remember correctly). So, you can watch the videos from the beginning. The videos every week will take up about 1 hour+? I watch them at 1.5 speed and do write down notes here and there. This is because the online quizzes will ask stuff about what the lecturers talk about in the lectures. So, what do the lecturers talk about? hahaha. Very philosophical stuff actually, to be honest I don't really gain a lot after listening to all the lectures, the only thing I gain is some content that the particular faculty teaches. The 6 faculties are Philosophy, Science, Computing, Engineering, Economics and Design. Each faculty takes up 2 weeks of lecture videos. 

For philosophy, science, computing, economics and design, there are online quizzes to be completed at the end of the 2 weeks. Each quiz contains 6 - 12 MCQ questions to complete. It's open book so you can just refer to your notes, web lectures, readings, google etc. The toughest one in my opinion is the philosophy one as all the options sound correct hahaha. But is okay if you don't do well for the philosophy quiz because you'll definitely do decently well for the rest of the quizzes.

For engineering and design, we have to complete an assignment. Engineering was more of like choosing which option is best for a certain situation so as to balance energy usage, cost and feasibility. Design is more of designing a wallet for your friend so that his/her needs are met. Pretty easy to complete in my opinion if u just set about 1-2 hours for each assignment. 

As for computing segment, there's an additional component which is to make an origami and it needs to be submitted during the computing tutorial. The origami needs to have at least 20 folds. The purpose of folding an origami is for us to focus on the steps taken because they are similar to an algorithm in computing. For me, I folded a lotus flower and was pretty satisfied about it haha. 

Tutorial

Tutorials were once in 2 weeks, 5 in total. Each tutorial covered one faculty/topic, except for design. Design was a bring home tutorial, which is the wallet design thing explained above. My tutor is a very nice person from the engineering faculty. He broke us into groups of 5 - 6 and wanted us to have a leader in each group for every tutorial. So, the leader will help to speak for the group and get class participation marks. So, you don't have to worry if you aren't able to speak up during tutorial. 36% class participation is not scary for this module, just speak up when you're leading and you'll be fine. Of course, every tutor has his/her own style luh, so it may differ for you. My tutor would have his own presentation slides, telling us what activities to do during the tutorial itself. Overall, I look forward going for the tutorials for this module. 

Final Reflection Paper

The final reflection paper is a scary 14%. But again, do. not. worry. Basically, the lecturers just wanna see what we've learnt at the end of the semester. So, they asked whether we'll prefer to learn the module as one main module or broken into different professions/faculties. So long as u state your stand and argue well, it shouldn't be a problem since it is only 600 words required. 

Final Exam

No final exam for this module haha. 

Expected Grade: CS

Final Grade: CS

Final Comments

This is a not very stressful module hahaha. Put in effort to do your quizzes, assignments and final reflection paper and this module shouldn't be a problem at all.

Stay tuned for more updates.

- Alan

Module Review: DAO2703/DSC2006 (AY18/19 Semester 1)

DAO2703/DSC2006 Operations and Technology Management is a 4 MC module that deals with fundamental operations and supply chain concepts that will help in understanding level 3000 Ops Management modules. I took this module as an elective but since there is no X in this module, I have to compete with business students as well. So, I'm writing this review from en engineering student's perspective. This module is deceivingly easy and has a pretty steep bell curve.

Assessment

10% Tutorial Participation
15% Course Project (Your entire tutorial group is your group for this project, legit)
5% Tutorial Assignment
5% Group Assignment 
5% Peer Evaluation
60% Finals (2 hours, Closed Book, 1 A4 cheatsheet)

Lecturer: 
First half: A/Prof Mabel Chou Cheng-Feng  
Second half: Dr Qi Mei

Tutor: 
Mr Seah Seow Buay

Textbooks/Readings

Operations Management, by Cachon and Terwisech, McGraw Hill. Not a must to have the textbook in my opinion. The lecture notes are sufficient and any queries I had, I would ask the Profs or my tutor straight away.

Lectures

There is 1 lecture per week, 2 hours long. I took this module alone but I still dragged myself to every lecture every week haha. Lectures are webcasted. Lectures were kindaaa draggy in my opinion. Between the two Profs, Dr Qi Mei's lectures are more worth going for. Prof Mabel sometimes will talk quite a lot on business examples and may deviate away from the main topic. It is good as it helps us to be exposed to certain case studies but it is also not entirely good because it is not totally related to the module content. Dr Qi Mei focuses more on the module content itself. 

Tutorial

Tutorial was once per week and were 1 hour long. For the first 2 tutorials, we were supposed to discuss on the course project with the whole tutorial group. The 15% one. I was surprised at first since it's my first time that the entire tutorial group (about 32 students) is the project group. Obviously we had to break into different groups to write subsections of the report. The project was about a promising technology today that can improve or had already improved on today's operations management. We had to either write a report or present our ideas in a certain other way (obviously report writing is easier). My group did on beacon technology and my subgroup managed the portion on how beacon tech can help in cold chain management.

For the subsequent tutorials, we were broken into groups of 4 or 5. For every tutorial, there will be a set of questions to solve. Then, one group will present the tutorial solutions every week. The powerpoint/Excel presentations prepared every week by the group will also be graded. One's presentation skills will also be graded under 5% of the class participation. Each group only presents once so it isn't a big problem. The problems in this module are mostly the deceivingly easy kind, meaning they look easy when u first read it but there are tricky parts to the questions. 

The other 5% class participation involves 3% attendance and 2% actual answering of questions in class. I attended all tutorials lol but didn't answer any questions so I didn't score that 2%. I guess is mainly because I took the module alone and was pretty awkward with the other tutorial group members throughout the entire semester. So, I didn't really speak up during class. But, if u just speak up, class participation shouldn't be a big problem. But ofc, you have to answer the question correctly too to earn the class participation mark. 

As for the final 5% group assignment, it involves Prof Qi Mei's portion. We were supposed to talk about a business process using the terminologies we learn in class and then, talk about how we can improve on it. For my group, we talked about how we can improve the queue system in gong cha in utown. It was an interesting interpretation of how the queuing was like in uTown. For this again, we can choose to write a report or something else. But the easiest way to express our thoughts is obviously write a report haha. Ain't too tough to complete in my opinion.

As for my tutor, I feel like he is definitely a good tutor. For tutorials, he would usually summarise the lecture content first, followed by letting the presenting group to present. After that, he'll have some Q&A and then present his own solutions to the tutorial. I feel he summarised the lecture content well. He would usually write his notes on the whiteboard and a student would usually take photo and send to the rest of us. His summarised notes are real helpful in learning. Finally, he would usually ask us a few of his own questions at the end of the tutorial. Whoever can answer them first and correctly will get class participation marks. Some of the questions are MCQ while some are Multi response questions while some are open ended. I didn't managed to answer any of the questions correctly hahaha, so I didn't get my 2% marks. I have to admit that out of all the modules I did this semester, I spent the least time on this module. So, the concepts are quite foreign to me sometimes and I did regret a little. 

Final Exam

The final exam was 2 hours long and consist of 60 MCQ questions. Hahaha this module had a very steep bell curve I guess because of how the finals is like. There are MCQ questions where it is split into 2 questions. Meaning the same question but the options are different for 2 questions. This meant that it's either u get 2 questions right or 2 questions wrong. Super tricky haha. There were wordy questions too where like more than 1 option seems like the right answer. This meant that I had to guess in the end. Thus, I felt I didn't do very well for this paper, as compared to my core modules. The cheatsheet I prepared were more of formulas and it failed to help me for the more wordy questions. You can view my cheat sheet here. 

Expected Grade: A

Final Grade: B+

Final Comments

In my opinion, I didn't spend a lot of time for this module as I thought it would be an easy module. I regretted it in the end. I feel that if you can put in sufficient time to learn the concepts in this module, read the readings given to you, then this module shouldn't be a problem for you. 

Stay tuned for more updates.

- Alan

Module Review: ES1531 (AY18/19 Semester 1)

ES1531 Critical thinking and writing is a 4 MC module that is compulsory for all engineering undergraduates. It is meant to teach us writing (reports and reflections) as well as presentation skills. It also covers engineering leadership skills which the industry feels that many engineers lack today. 

Assessment

Assignment 1 (Individual, 20%)
Assignment 2 (Group, 35%)
Assignment 3 (Individual in class assignment, 30%)
Assignment 4 (Individual, 15%)

(Do take note that the assessment is based on the semester I took this module and it may change for yours)

Tutor: 
Ms Norsalawati Bte Salamat

Textbooks/Readings
No textbooks for this module. There are readings that will be provided that can be seen below. However, for me, the most important one is the core reading, followed by [2] for supplementary readings. The readings were meant to teach us core leadership skills that are used in the engineering sector such as collaborative optimization, organizational innovation etc. 

Core Reading
Rottmann, C.,Sacks, R., & Reeve, D. (2014). Engineering leadership: grounding leadership theory in engineers’ professional identities. Leadership, 11(3), 351–373. [Of particular importance is the 3-orientations model of engineering leadership on p.359]

Supplementary Readings
[1] Colcleugh, D. (2013). Everyone a leader: a guide to leading high-performance organizations for engineers and scientists. Toronto, Ontario, Canada: University of Toronto Press. [Read the first two chapters and pursue other chapters following your needs and interests]
[2] Freedman, J. (2010, January 27). The six seconds EQ model. Retrieved from https://www.6seconds.org/2010/01/27/the-six-seconds-eq-model/. [Focus reading on the section Eight Competencies of Emotional Intelligence]
[3] Goldberg, D. E. (2010). The missing basics and other philosophical reflections for the transformation of engineering education. In D. Grasso, & M. B. Burkins (eds.), Holistic engineering education (pp.145-158). NY: Springer.
[4] Ruben, B. D., & Gigliotti, R. A. (2016). Leadership as social influence: An expanded view of leadership communication theory and practice. Journal of Leadership & Organizational Studies, 23(4), 467-479. [Focus reading on the sections on agenda setting, management of meaning, sense-making and sense-giving for a deeper understanding of influence dynamics]
[5] Schell, W. J., & Kauffmann, P. J. (2016). Understanding engineering leadership: a critical review of the literature. Proceedings of the International Annual Conference of the American Society for Engineering Management; Huntsville: 1-11.
[6] Sucher, S., & Preble, M. (2017). Case study: follow dubious orders or speak up? An intern contemplates whether she should compromise her values for a job. Harvard Business Review, 95(4), 139-143.

Lectures

There are no lectures for this module.

Tutorial

There is weekly tutorial sessions which are 2 hours long. The tutorials are usually spent on preparing us for our assignments and teaching us certain skills required for the assignments. I will break down the 4 assignments below. However, to be very honest, I felt that I didn't really learn a lot from this module. I initially thought that the module will teach us writing skills for reports and papers, but instead it focused more on leadership skills. It is not a bad thing as I did have a different perspective of engineering leaders after this module. The tutor does give us good advice in our writing and how we can improve on it too. But most of the writing skills I used were still the ones I learnt in Junior College (JC).  

Assignment 1
Assignment 1 is a 800 word reflection on a certain leadership case that has happened to you. It can be good or bad and we are supposed to come out with an assessment question to see how we can improve or learn from this case. After that, in the reflection, we had to answer the assessment question we gave ourselves. We are supposed to use the terminologies in the readings to help us analyse our case. To me, this assignment is similar to the application question in General Paper (GP) in JC. So, I answered the assignment in a very similar manner and surprisingly, did decently well for this.  

Assignment 2
Assignment 2 is a 1800 to 2000 words report. We were grouped into teams of 3. We were given the UN sustainable goals and we had to choose a goal and a country. We had to explain the problem in the country and come up with solutions for it. The explanation has to be scientifically or engineering related and not something like lack of government intervention. We had to do an initial draft first and our tutor will give us advice about it. In my opinion, my tutor gave pretty good advice, in the sense that I knew where our problems in the writing were after consulting her. We then rewrote our report and submitted it at week 13. I did average for this assignment in the end. 

Assignment 3
Assignment 3 was kind of like a "finals paper"? It was an in class assignment, open book and 1.5 hours long. The format of this assignment is the same as assignment 1. However, this time, the case is given in the question paper and we were supposed to come out with an assessment question related to the case study and answer that question. An example of an assessment question could be like "For a leader to display intellectual courage, how does a leader compromise on intellectual humility?" Then, the rest of the essay will be used to answer this question that u come up with. Thus, I felt like it is similar to the application question for GP. Since there was a time limit for this assignment, I felt I didn't write my best for this paper and did average for this assignment. 

Assignment 4
Assignment 4 is basically class participation in tutorials. For some tutorials, we were grouped into the same group of 3 people and were required to present some of our ideas and reflections in class. The presentations are often impromptu, so just go up in front of the class to speak and class participation shouldn't be a big problem.

However, for the last tutorial, we were supposed to create a poster for our report in assignment 2 and present it. Basically, we were supposed to present our solutions for the problem mentioned. Thereafter, the tutor will ask us questions and we will answer them. Ain't a big worry in my opinion.

Expected Grade: B

Final Grade: A-

Final Comments

I was surprised that I can actually get A- for this module. I felt that my writing skills are still not very good after this module and I felt that I didn't gain a lot after this module. Maybe it is because I came in with expectations of learning critical writing skills and the fact that my expectations were not met, that's why I feel this way. I guess it was my assignment 1 that managed to pull my grade up to A-. I felt that maybe instead of just focusing on engineering leadership skills (which is good, because it provided me with a new perspective about leadership in engineering), a segment can be spent on writing skills as well. 

Stay tuned for more updates.

- Alan