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