EG2401A Engineering Professionalism is now a 2 MC module. It is a faculty requirement module. EG2401 used to be a 3 MC module but I'm part of the first batch to take the 2 MC version of this module. This module focuses on engineering ethics and the main thing that's different now is that there is no final exam for this module (YAY! This means that you don't really have to consider taking this module in summer exchange anymore).
Assessment
40% Class Participation (Yes, this percentage is huge lol)
60% Group Project (Group report, presentation)
60% Group Project (Group report, presentation)
Lecturer:
Weeks 1 - 3: A/Prof Lee Tong Heng
Weeks 4 - 6: A/Prof Kevin Kuang
Weeks 7 - 9: A/Prof Neoh Koon Gee
Weeks 10 - 12: Optional lectures (only apply for EG2401)
Weeks 1 - 3: A/Prof Lee Tong Heng
Weeks 4 - 6: A/Prof Kevin Kuang
Weeks 7 - 9: A/Prof Neoh Koon Gee
Weeks 10 - 12: Optional lectures (only apply for EG2401)
Tutor:
A/Prof Yang Hyun Soo
A/Prof Yang Hyun Soo
Textbooks/Readings
Charles B. Fleddermann Engineering Ethics - 4th Edition. If it's possible to find the online pdf version of this textbook, use that. The content in the textbook does supplement the lecture notes as well as for the tutorial. I don't find a need to purchase the textbook.
Lectures
Charles B. Fleddermann Engineering Ethics - 4th Edition. If it's possible to find the online pdf version of this textbook, use that. The content in the textbook does supplement the lecture notes as well as for the tutorial. I don't find a need to purchase the textbook.
Lectures
Lecture was once a week and was 2 hours long. Andddd they're webcasted. There were actually 2 lecture timeslots. I was allocated the Wednesday night lecture slot but because I had something on every Wednesday night, I just went for the Tuesday afternoon one instead. I would like to say that there isn't a need to attend physical lectures for this module. (Is this the first time Alan is saying this!? No, I don't think so) But yeap, you can just view the lectures on your laptop at 1.75x or 2x speed. I mean the content is useful for engineering work in future but some stuff are pretty straight forward.
The main stuff covered is the different types of ethics and the different perspectives to look at a particular case. Engineering code of ethics was also introduced and impact of engineering on the environment was also talked about towards the end.
People taking EG2401 and EG2401A attended the same lectures. Thus, Prof T.H. Lee talked a lot about revising for finals which doesn't really apply for us. He tends to beat around the bush too so I advice just watching webcast. The other lecturers were okay I guess but I just feel there isn't a need to attend the physical lectures. Like sometimes doing a google search can give the same information too, unlike engineering core modules. Thus, webcasts.
The main stuff covered is the different types of ethics and the different perspectives to look at a particular case. Engineering code of ethics was also introduced and impact of engineering on the environment was also talked about towards the end.
People taking EG2401 and EG2401A attended the same lectures. Thus, Prof T.H. Lee talked a lot about revising for finals which doesn't really apply for us. He tends to beat around the bush too so I advice just watching webcast. The other lecturers were okay I guess but I just feel there isn't a need to attend the physical lectures. Like sometimes doing a google search can give the same information too, unlike engineering core modules. Thus, webcasts.
Tutorial
There were a total of 6 tutorial sessions throughout the entire semester. There were supposed to be 7 but my tutor reduced it to 6. So yes, 40% of class participation depends on just 6 tutorial sessions hahaha (Actually 5, because the first tutorial is just an introductory tutorial). Each tutorial session is only an hour long. For every tutorial except for the last one, there is a set of tutorial questions for us to complete. It is more of the open ended kind of questions since we are dealing with ethics here. There isn't like an exact correct or wrong answer and thus, the answers are like kinda open for debate (thus this is where class participation come in). Each tutorial worksheet has 3 - 4 questions. In the previous tutorial, the tutor will assign students to present one question each for the next tutorial. Since there were only 14 of us and there were only that many questions in the tutorial, all of us only presented once for the tutorial questions throughout the semester. We can use any form of presentation platform (Word, PPT, Google Docs etc) we like so long as we did our work and got our answer across.
Sooo, the tutor is pretty freestyle in my opinion. For every tutorial, the students will just present their answers. And we have to ask them questions or give our opinions so that we get our class participation marks. The questions/remarks we make need not be very insightful, sometimes even if we just summarize what the student presented, our tutor will still credit us for participating in class. Maybe this only applies for my tutor but my point is just to talk during class. You need not bring up new points, just summarizing is also contributing to your class participation already. PLUS, since class participation is 40%, how much you speak in each tutorial session is actually worth approx. 10% of your grades. (Crazy, isn't it?)
I like my tutor in the sense that, when there are students who have not spoken at all throughout the tutorial session, he would call his/her name and ask him/her for his/her opinion on the issue so that that student can get some class participation marks. I would say for the tutorial questions itself, they are rather straightforward. Sometimes, we require to search for more examples but they can easily be found on the internet, so you do not have to worry about the difficulty of these questions. The difficulty comes in the project portion.
As mentioned earlier, there were 6 tutorial sessions in total. The first is an introductory one where the tutor broke down the components of the module etc and we had to choose our project topic as well. The next 4 were on the tutorials. So, there are 4 tutorial worksheets in total. The sixth tutorial involves the presentation of our project topic which I'll elaborate later. The final one was supposed to be 2 sessions but the tutor combined it into one 1.5 hour session so that it is more convenient for us (like we don't have to go for that tutorial lesson twice which is on a Monday morning at 9 am.)
Project
Wow, the project. Pretty intense one, I would say. We were split into groups of 3 or 4. My group had 4 students. Luckily, we all knew each other already so our discussions were much faster. We were given nine project topics to choose from and to write a report about it. The deadline of the report was on Week 11. All the topics revolve around the idea of engineering ethics and whether we agree with the implementation of that certain topic in today's society. (e.g. digital technology, spycam, clinical trials etc) My group chose the topic on clinical trials in developing countries. Basically, the outline of the report involves us bringing up 4 case studies on such trials and discussing whether they are ethical anot using the ethics concepts learnt in lectures. We have to propose viable solutions as well to counter the unethical aspects of the clinical trials. The outline for the other topics are also rather similar, just that the topic is different. Research is obviously needed, AND we had to write around 25 pages for the report (20 for a group of 3 and 15 for a group of 2). I mean 25 pages is stated as the maximum but we used it as a guideline for our report. We had to also submit a 2 page interim report to our tutor in Recess Week to update him on our progress of the report.
I would say our tutor is lacking in this aspect because he gave us little to no feedback with regards to our report and interim report. As such, we just wrote the report based on our own feel andddd yeap. We just wrote the report using our own style and managed to churn out 25 pages of arguments and solutions. Well, the funny thing is that we only started legitimately discussing the report writing on week 9/10 and we churned out the entire thing within a week lol. It was an interesting process but not an easy one of course. (Please don't follow us. Start writing earlier.)
Now, for the presentation. So, other than the report, we had to prepare presentation slides to present our topic to the tutorial class on the last tutorial session. Well, my group was pretty last minute so we literally just copied our report into the presentation slides and changed them into point form. There wasn't any exact guidelines to follow for the presentation either so we just did our own flow and everything. So, for the actual presentation, groups of 3 had 5 minutes each to present and groups of 4 (my group) had only 4 minutes each to present. Pretty intense eh. We actually rehearsed the presentation a few times before the actual one so that we could present within the time limit. We had to speak pretty fast sooo, I advise not to present your entire report. But present the key factors that are more important in the report.
As usual, after every presentation, there will be a Q&A session and we had to speak up, ask questions or give your opinion in order to obtain our class participation. The presentation was pretty okay in my opinion, so the toughest part of this module is just the report writing.
Sooo, the tutor is pretty freestyle in my opinion. For every tutorial, the students will just present their answers. And we have to ask them questions or give our opinions so that we get our class participation marks. The questions/remarks we make need not be very insightful, sometimes even if we just summarize what the student presented, our tutor will still credit us for participating in class. Maybe this only applies for my tutor but my point is just to talk during class. You need not bring up new points, just summarizing is also contributing to your class participation already. PLUS, since class participation is 40%, how much you speak in each tutorial session is actually worth approx. 10% of your grades. (Crazy, isn't it?)
I like my tutor in the sense that, when there are students who have not spoken at all throughout the tutorial session, he would call his/her name and ask him/her for his/her opinion on the issue so that that student can get some class participation marks. I would say for the tutorial questions itself, they are rather straightforward. Sometimes, we require to search for more examples but they can easily be found on the internet, so you do not have to worry about the difficulty of these questions. The difficulty comes in the project portion.
As mentioned earlier, there were 6 tutorial sessions in total. The first is an introductory one where the tutor broke down the components of the module etc and we had to choose our project topic as well. The next 4 were on the tutorials. So, there are 4 tutorial worksheets in total. The sixth tutorial involves the presentation of our project topic which I'll elaborate later. The final one was supposed to be 2 sessions but the tutor combined it into one 1.5 hour session so that it is more convenient for us (like we don't have to go for that tutorial lesson twice which is on a Monday morning at 9 am.)
Project
Wow, the project. Pretty intense one, I would say. We were split into groups of 3 or 4. My group had 4 students. Luckily, we all knew each other already so our discussions were much faster. We were given nine project topics to choose from and to write a report about it. The deadline of the report was on Week 11. All the topics revolve around the idea of engineering ethics and whether we agree with the implementation of that certain topic in today's society. (e.g. digital technology, spycam, clinical trials etc) My group chose the topic on clinical trials in developing countries. Basically, the outline of the report involves us bringing up 4 case studies on such trials and discussing whether they are ethical anot using the ethics concepts learnt in lectures. We have to propose viable solutions as well to counter the unethical aspects of the clinical trials. The outline for the other topics are also rather similar, just that the topic is different. Research is obviously needed, AND we had to write around 25 pages for the report (20 for a group of 3 and 15 for a group of 2). I mean 25 pages is stated as the maximum but we used it as a guideline for our report. We had to also submit a 2 page interim report to our tutor in Recess Week to update him on our progress of the report.
I would say our tutor is lacking in this aspect because he gave us little to no feedback with regards to our report and interim report. As such, we just wrote the report based on our own feel andddd yeap. We just wrote the report using our own style and managed to churn out 25 pages of arguments and solutions. Well, the funny thing is that we only started legitimately discussing the report writing on week 9/10 and we churned out the entire thing within a week lol. It was an interesting process but not an easy one of course. (Please don't follow us. Start writing earlier.)
Now, for the presentation. So, other than the report, we had to prepare presentation slides to present our topic to the tutorial class on the last tutorial session. Well, my group was pretty last minute so we literally just copied our report into the presentation slides and changed them into point form. There wasn't any exact guidelines to follow for the presentation either so we just did our own flow and everything. So, for the actual presentation, groups of 3 had 5 minutes each to present and groups of 4 (my group) had only 4 minutes each to present. Pretty intense eh. We actually rehearsed the presentation a few times before the actual one so that we could present within the time limit. We had to speak pretty fast sooo, I advise not to present your entire report. But present the key factors that are more important in the report.
As usual, after every presentation, there will be a Q&A session and we had to speak up, ask questions or give your opinion in order to obtain our class participation. The presentation was pretty okay in my opinion, so the toughest part of this module is just the report writing.
Expected Grade: B
Final Grade: A-
Final Comments
This grade came as a real real surprise, I would say. I didn't expect us to do that well because we did it in a rather freestyle manner but I'm happy that we did it haha.
This module's difficult part would be the project portion. I am glad that they removed the final exam portion as the finals require us to write essays about ethical considerations (which is super tough in my opinion). Overall, I would say that you can now take this module in NUS and need not worry about having to find a summer exchange programme for this module anymore.
This module's difficult part would be the project portion. I am glad that they removed the final exam portion as the finals require us to write essays about ethical considerations (which is super tough in my opinion). Overall, I would say that you can now take this module in NUS and need not worry about having to find a summer exchange programme for this module anymore.
Stay tuned for more updates.
- Alan
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