EG2501 Review (AY21/22 S2)

Taken during AY21/22 Semester 2.

Online Lectures.
Physical Tutorials.

There are many problems with the module and it gets worse over time as the module progresses. A module with a seemingly good learning outcome, but wrong implementation which strays from the learning outcome. This module probably relates to Civil Engineering as many of them in the teaching team have a background in Civil Engineering. However, the contents cover more of ideation, policies and a superficial view of systems thinking.

Lectures are guest speakers from important govt organisations in charge of developing the city. For example, URA. HDB. PUB, LTA and so on… The speakers are generally elders who took charge in key projects in Singapore. Perhaps it is useful if you are not from Singapore and do not know the history of Singapore’s development from third world to first. For the rest of us, it is your typical “grandfather story” lecture. There is little structure to lectures as it is meant for the speaker to share their experience. I would call it a sharing session rather than a lecture. The problem is that it is not known what the expected learning outcome should be and the lectures have no relation to the quizzes.

There were 4 quizzes which were 30 questions open book open internet. It tests you on how fast you can Google because the questions are on cold hard facts. It has no relation to the lectures. Some questions were confusing because the phrasing makes it ambiguous on which answer to choose. Median is very high (around 27), since most answers can be googled, but take note of the tricky phrasing to the last few questions.

There are 5 tutorials, aka Studio sessions, which are held every 3 weeks. Every studio consists of group presentations which are all graded equally. Each team will build up on their research findings until the Final studio which will be to pitch your final solution.

Your tutorial group during ModReg selection is according to the location that you will be working on (Queenstown, Central, Punggol) so choose one you think you are interested in. Note that you may be reshuffled to have equal tutorial group sizes. Groups are created to make it multidisciplinary (a mixture of courses). And it is up to your luck what kind of group you are in. Also, it makes collaborating difficult since everyone has extremely different timetables. Most of the time we are meeting late at night over zoom to finalize the slides. As this is mainly a presentation-based module, someone who knows how to do good visuals will be an advantage. In the final studio, we needed to create a promotional video for our final pitch too. From their emphasis, it seems that the studio leaders are very biased towards a very dramatic promotional video.

Notice that tutorial bidding is until week 2, and sometimes there are changes until week 3. This means that your first studio (week 3) will definitely be a rushed work since groups cannot be finalized until week 3 itself. And they expect you to “walk around” the district and identify key problems and present your findings by the first studio presentation which is graded.

Unlike typical university modules which require strict citations and attributions, this module is completely the opposite where intellectual property does not need to be respected. It was mentioned that students’ ideas will be shared with external organisations. Some studio leaders were also previously from key organisations. This is a potential conflict of interest since our ideas may need to be in line with their goals to score well in the module. Perhaps this is also an avenue for these organisations to outsource their ideation to unsuspecting students.

Studio sessions always overrun, taking up the full 3 hours and slightly more. Q&A typically takes longer than the 10min presentation itself and one time it lasted more than 20 mins for my group. Thankfully for me, my following lesson was a recorded zoom lecture. Some people had to leave halfway during the last group’s presentation because they had to rush to their next physical class. Sometimes the Q&A became a debate amongst all the studio leaders giving their different opinions of our solution if it does not align with their goal. Take their opinions with a pinch of salt as well. There is no consistency in their feedback. One time they shot down my group's idea, only for them to use it as a good example when giving advice to another group. Nevertheless, you may be able to guess what an ideal plan will be based on your studio leader’s background and try to create a plan that they already have in mind.

There are also participation points during Studio sessions if you ask questions. Initially there was this one guy who kept shooting us questions for the first few studios. Along the way as our plan got more refined over the weeks, he started giving suggestions and agreements instead of shooting us because he had no other things left to shoot. Many others also ask obvious questions just to get some brownie points.

In the final studio, there was a media team from a local news channel who recorded us doing our presentation. Consent was only given less than 18 hours prior to the session via an announcement. There were no media release documents and hence no option to opt out. School is supposed to provide us with a safe space since it is our first time doing a pitch that relates to policies and governance. Sensitive work like these should not be freely shared with external organisations. This was disrespectful to us since we were not given sufficient time for consent.

At the end of the day, this module overall is “all talk” but “no action”. We are simply taking ideas from each other, aligning with goals that the assessors already had in mind, and repackaging it to look nice. Is this what is actually happening in urban development? Scary to say, perhaps the unpleasant nuances I witnessed are indeed representative of the culture in these organisations.

PS. I read this review from the previous semester, it is quite relevant as well (I am not related to this person):

https://www.reddit.com/r/nus/comments/rqfx2x/comment/hqd5px2/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3