Quiescent Reviews

  UTW1001O The Urban and the Wild: Reading Urban Progress in Southeast Asia Ecocritically. Taken during AY21/22 Semester 2 - Fully online module - First time this module is being run Deliverables - Reflective Summary (15%): Assignment 1 - 8-minute Oral Pitch (25%): Assignment 2 - Research Paper (40%): Assignment 3 - Peer Review (10%) - Class Participation (10%) Actual grade: A There are 3 major assignments that are all individual. Unlike some UTW modules, there are no interview or survey portions. For the reflective summary, you are given a short article to read and you must write your review on it. As it is academic writing, your essay should be objective and the focus is to keep it easy to read. Do not be overly artistic with cliques or idioms. For the oral pitch, you will propose a topic of your own interest to do ecocritical analysis on it for your research paper. Like all other UTW modules, this module is very time-consuming especially after recess week since it requires you t...

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 shar...

Taken during AY21/22 Semester 1 Fully online module Pre-recorded lecture: Dr Tan Ban Pin Deliverables Assignment 1 - 10% Midterms - 30% Assignment 2 - 10% Finals - 50% Review There were only 4 chapters - Series and sequences - Differentiation - Integration - Vectors A bridging module which doesn't serve the purpose of bridging. Topics were less than the A Levels syllabus. You should note that important A Level topics such as complex numbers, integrating factor, mathematical induction and Maclaurin's series were  not  taught. Even after taking this module, I have to self-study those missing topics as my future semester modules assume A Level proficiency. I came from a polytechnic engineering course. Thus, I knew everything in the syllabus. It has very light workload and it is possible to study 1 day before the exam. Although the midterm questions were easy, it was 1 hour so the difficulty is the time limit. I managed to do 4 of 5 questions but there were many careless mistakes....

Taken in AY21/22 S1.  Format Lecture: Zoom Tutorial: Physical (optional) / Zoom recording Lab: Physical Quiz/Exam: Examplify  with Zoom proctoring. Lock down internet. Open book (can open any files/software on your PC). Teachers Lecture: Prof Henry (First 3 weeks), Prof Gu Jing (Next 3 weeks), Prof Rajesh (Second half of semester) Tutorial: Prof Rajesh Lab: Prof Ba Myint Deliverables Week 3: Quiz 1 (2.5%) Week 5: Quiz 2  (2.5%) Week 6: Assignment 1 (15%) Week 12: Quiz 3  (5%) Week 13: Assignment 2 (25%) Exam Week 2: Exam (50%) Review Take note that my review is in perspective of someone who has had 3 years of experience in STM32 embedded programming coming from polytechnic. To sum it up, the module is well-taught in terms of theory (lecture/tutorial) with some very passionate lecturers. I have close to no complains for the lectures -- it is of very high quality. However, I felt the labs are disorganised which is where most people complain about in their mod...

Taken in AY21/22 S1.  Fully online module (Lecture & Tutorial) Deliverables All submissions throughout the semester are in Week 13 Quizzes (5%) Forum posts (10%) Tutorial class participation (10%) Individual essay (25%) - 1500 word limit Group report (50%) - 6000 word limit Review This module was originally under SDE, but due to the new engineering curriculum, students in FoE took this for the first time this semester. The module is essentially project management techniques in the built environment . Therefore, the techniques taught are not for the small school projects but rather large-scale industrial projects. Prof Low taught the lecture. Each lecture is 2 hours long without any breaks. I attended the lectures live for the first 3 weeks and afterwards I gave up. While Prof Low is very knowledgeable and has a lot of experience and stories to tell, I felt that watching a Zoom lecture is too boring and I couldn't pay attention.  From week 4 onwards, I did not bother w...

Taken in July 2021 Review Test format https://www.comp.nus.edu.sg/programmes/ug/exemptions/a-levels/ Online closed book test. No compilers or IDEs. No cheatsheets. Non-programmable calculator and blank paper allowed. Section A: 10 MCQs covering theory (such as algorithms or logical thinking) Section B: 5 Fill-in-the-blank questions. Requires you to read through code snippets and answer what number will be printed out. Section C: 5 Open-ended questions. Blindly write out the code to achieve the given scenario. Opinions Section A is mainly theory. Sequences, ranges, algorithms and logic. For section B, it tests you on your understanding of code. This includes loops, recursive functions, and even pass-by-reference/pass-by-value. Some language specific knowledge are needed like mutable/immutable types like lists/tuples in Python. Since the code snippets are given in Java, C and Python, this section should be easier if you know multiple languages as you can cross check your answer. For ...

 Taken in AY21/22 S1 (Mini-Semester A) Deliverables Watch all E-Learning videos and do the quiz Score 60% for your VMock resume Attempt VMock interview. Review E-Learning Videos To be honest, I felt the video quality of teaching was very good. The knowledge is good to know and there is no stress of an exam. They are bite-sized of about 10 mins per week with quizzes in between. Resume As I had a resume from polytechnic, I copied most contents from it. But since I am at it, I also took this opportunity to delete irrelevant information and update it to be current. Using the VMock platform, you can download the recommended NUS resume template. Follow everything nicely and you should be able to get 75% easily in VMock. I tried to perfect some details and I scored well above 90% in the end. Total time spent was about 2 hours but I was a bit nitpicky.  Interview VMock uses their so-called AI technology to analyse your body language, facial expressions and speech. The facial expr...