HAIII my hot mess is back to greet everyone with another semester in NTU!
Disclaimer (that I'll need to copy and paste forever): I am not a frequent lecture-goer. I tend to watch recorded online lectures instead and study at my own pace. So I will give inaccurate reviews about lectures.
And also, it's been at least a month since I've had any lessons. LMAO I just nua 120% after my exams. I may have forgotten some notable things to mention along the way.
Overview
Remember how I complained way too much about having too much finals? I've learnt the hard way that having too much finals is a blessing in disguise. Conversely, too little finals is very troubling! It means that you have too much assignments. I don't even think mid-terms existed in my dictionary because I am always preparing for a combination of assignments and quizzes every single week! I don't actually remember studying for finals at all until the week that my finals actually started. I guess it was a sigh of relief when finals week started (it's way less intense than my actual school term) but I mean I still botched my finals so... Not a good sign when you actually have an idea that you aren't even doing well for your continuous assignments...
Another thing. so from this semester onwards, my GPA for Business will be separate from my GPA for Com Science. With that, the extent that I botched my Business mods is too obvious T^T Not saying that I did amazing for Com Science though. But relative to Business, Com Science didn't feel half as disastrous.
I'm hoping that next semester (when I start having BA mods) would be better for Business. As for Com Science, I know next semester is very critical semester as well. Year 2 Sem 1 will really be a do-or-die semester so let's hope for the best! (And also I need to win the STAR Wars first. My ideal timetable that I've painstakingly madeby manual labour has a 3-day work week. Take my lecture attendance, or lack thereof, for consideration 😅. Anyway so that gives me 2 free days to study or focus on the onslaught of assignments. Or maybe continue driving lessons if I haven't pass by the time school reopens T^T)
AB0601 - Communication Management Fundamentals
Tutor: Ms Emma Jarman-Jones
Assessment criteria: Social Media Assessment (25%), Written Assessment - email (20%), Final Presentation (30%), Class Participation (25%)
The fact that this is a 2 AU mod is a blasphemy. I spent more time on this subject compared to the other actual core subjects that I should be learning in university. But this is a GER-Core subject so everyone has to do it. And in my case, it's counted in both Business and Com Science GPA #taintedGPA. Other faculties have their counterparts. Like SCSE has Engineering Communication I and II which is WAY easier than this NBS counterpart! My Com Science friends told me that they do pair work and just write a proposal or smth it's quite easy. But of course being a BCG student yea I signed up to mix with the merciless bunch of NBS students. I don't mean "merciless" with malicious intent, it's more like a lot of them really know how to talk, they are capable of talking a lot and actually doing a good job convincing others even if they need not know everything about the topic. Somehow all the NBS students have that skill except for me T^T Merciless is also an appropriate word for this subject as this is literally a "How to communicate" subject, obviously you talk or they can't evaluate you on anything!
There aren't any recommended tutors or anything (though I've heard speculations that ang mor teachers are more lenient in grading. Is my tutor considered lenient???). The bell curve is within your class, not across classes. Just impress your tutor in class, no holds barred. I think luck plays a small factor into your grades. It's ideal to get a lenient teacher + a peaceful class. I thought my prof is already relatively nice normally (but when she grades our assessment, I think it's like a whole different side of her fml 😂), can't say the same for my class. My prof didn't really care if we spout rubbish. I (like the rest of the people in my class...) am guilty of opening my mouth and contributing absolutely nothing but still getting class part marks for that. They just get a TA to track how many times each student opens their mouth.
IDK if this is a valid advice, but my core group of friends all went for different classes. So none of us end up slitting one another in the throat or smth fighting for class part 😂 I think that would be an unconventional but maybe feasible advice that I would give. At least everyone in your group of friends has a chance of doing well.
Onto the assessments. I don't have good tips to give, I think I botched those terribly which explains what happened to me now. To articulate how to be better at communication, it's really common sense. Practice a lot! And the remaining part is ad-lib on the spot. They have a Q&A segment for a reason. I know most people will say "Oh just get your classmates to plant Q&A for you lah!" but I don't have friends ok I just tried my best, 100% ad-lib.
To end off, something nice that my prof said. Just in case you are scared of public speaking and stuffs, just remember that your class has 4 walls, it's safe. Your classmates are equally scared, so everyone is on the same boat. Everyone suffers with you, so help one another out 😊
AB1601 - Organisational Behaviour and Design
Tutor: Mr Tan Kin Hock
Assessment criteria (fml I may not remember everything): Creative thinking assignment (20%), critical thinking assignment (20%), competency based assessment (20%), quizzes (4 * 5% = 20%), team presentation (5%), peer evaluation (5%), class participation (6%), research participation (4%).
Now I hope that adds up to 100% I am not even sure!
The course coordinator, Dr Koh, is high key gone up his mind. There is way too much to do for a subject that is... "a fluff mod". There isn't finals for this so the weightage for finals has been split up like... this. To be honest, I don't see the usefulness of this subject unless I'm considering HR specialisation. The way the subject has been taught reinforces that idea of mine as well. Unfortunately, we just have to take all these year 1 core mods in NBS, even those not related to BA that I'll be taking from year 2 onwards.
What you learn are really common sense stuffs like "individual differences in personality", "teamwork", "leadership" etc. Things that you shouldn't even have a core subject for! The funny part is trying to study for the quizzes. You'll look through the notes and go "... What the f*ck am I studying for? This is common sense." but still screwing it up at the end.
Both creative and critical thinking assignments are really time-consuming. It's barely related to the actual things you learn in this subject as well, if you actually learn anything in the first place. Both assignments are marked internally by your own tutor, so just impress your tutor. For my tutor, I don't even know what's his benchmark of impressive. I felt like he went by feel when he marked the assignment. So if he liked the points in his biased and subjective opinion, you're fine. But otherwise you can beef up your points/ideas so much and he'll still mark you down if he doesn't agree with it. We get comments for our assignments but it didn't help at all if he just copied comments across students (eg. all A- students will get comment 1, all B+ students get comment 2 etc. without any personalisation). If anyone has interest in how I fare, just know that (i) for the assignment that I bs too much about, he liked it and I did fine, and; (ii) on the other hand, the assignment that I put in so much effort for bombed so...
The only easy points to get is the "research participation", which sounds daunting by its name, but you basically just go for a total of 2 hours (not consecutively, they wouldn't allow even if you want to) and just do surveys, mini-tests/games for the NBS researchers to use. It's made to be a win-win. You have one whole semester to get those chill 2 hours. Otherwise, you can write 2 research reports. The latter stipulation is just to mandate us to just participate in their research, plain and simple, making it a win-win for both students and the research staffs in NBS.
AD1101 - Financial Accounting
Tutor: Assoc Prof Clement Tan (also the course coordinator 😊)
Assessment criteria: Class participation (15%), Team project (15%), Cengage test (5%, one off), LAMS questions (7% in total, weekly), Cengage questions (8% in total, weekly), Finals (50%)
What is up with NBS and all the convoluted rubrics?
At least this burdensome 4AU mod felt a little more useful. But very complicated. Unlike my mum, I'm really not good at accounting.(Imagine if I had really taken accountancy. I would have been 166% fucked.) Overall, I didn't do well for this mod, but still well enough to exceed my low expectations.
Ok where to break it down? Technically, your 1 AU worth of "lectures" (other 3 AUs for seminar classes) comes from the weekly LAMS and Cengage. The LAMS videos are technically your "lecture recordings", by Prof Anil. And it's really bad. I could rant about his slipshod work forever but to summarise, he's reading off from the powerpoint slides and BTW those slides do nothing to help you answer the graded LAMS and Cengage questions. You get a penalty for messing up your LAMS questions in your first (and maybe only) try simply because they didn't teach you well. Say goodbye to 7%. At least you can retry Cengage questions without penalty and you have 3 chances to verify each question's answers in every attempt.(Or you can ask your friend to be the scapegoat and try the questions first, then ss the answer to everyone 😉.) The tutors expect you to go into seminar classes fully equipped with the necessary knowledge from the LAMS videos for the week, but you'll still go in with a blank slate if the LAMS lectures are not helpful at all.
My tutor is really really good! I would highly recommend you to be in Prof Tan's class.What's praying to bell curve god when you can worship him? He can turn our blank slate (refer to above for my views on LAMS lectures) into helpful knowledge! He may go really fast or drop super complicated terms at times (at least IMO I already said that I have no accounting DNA I must've gotten it from my dad because I HAVE NONE!) but at least he tries to make those knowledge bite-sized, and it does help most of the time! I like the way he does class part. He encourages and compliments students every time they speak, always saying "YES! You are absolutely correct, (name).". As the youngsters would say, good vibes yea. He actually makes the effort to remember all his students' name, even the inconspicuous ones. (BTW my class don't really have inconspicuous kids. Most of us are the overly competitive BCG kids 😅) So everyone feels inclusive~
Prof Tan does a lot for the students outside his seminars as well. He happily accepts email Q&A. By email Q&A, you can ask him seminar questions. By seminar questions, it's past year paper questions. So if I say that Prof Tan does answer email Q&A... you get my point 😉 Even though the school policy forbids answers to be given for past year papers. Basically he found a legal detour to help us handle past year papers. Another reason why he prefers email over one-on-one consultation is because he can easily share his email reply to all his over students on NTULearn! He intends to maximise the number of students to benefit from his help, so he shares those email Q&A across all his 4 seminar groups 👍
Next, team project. I like my team because it's my core group of friends mah 😂 The content of the team project is cancerous though. We had to water down our hardwork into 5 pages (with double spacing and all the specifications against us to make it the sloppiest 5 pages ever) that can barely cover anything. 48 hours of hardwork by all of us and we're so proud of it! Although the marker, none other than only (yep only 1 marker for the whole cohort because "consistency" but wouldn't that include getting sian of marking for the later groups?) Prof Anil, says otherwise. I think the team project results dampen our whole group's overall grade 😠 But nevertheless, at least our group has the right feel~
Now onto the finals! Ok I had one major botch: I totally forgot what FRS 115 does. I lost 15 marks for that 😂 That's 7.5% of overall grades gone *dies inside*. Otherwise, other than mistakes that are oversight on my part, the other questions didn't felt too onerous. They are broken down into more parts (ie. lesser marks per part, ie. lesser marks gone for screwing up a part). I think my finals are pretty shit, but not as shit as group project grades. At least it's the shit that managed to pull up my disastrous group project grades.(Sounds exactly like my B Law last sem, bombed the mid-term assignment in a bad way, sure that my finals are shit because I didn't even finish half the paper last time, but my finals had to be less disastrous than my assignment.)
CZ1005 - Digital Logic
Course coordinator/Lecturer: Assoc Prof Chan Syin, Dr Vivek Chaturvedi
Tutor: Prof Chan Syin
Assessment criteria: Lab quizzes (5 * 4.4% = 22%), Lab work (5 * 2% = 10%), LAMS questions (8% total), Finals (60%)
If you take DL in semester 2, you're in an overwhelming minority of students to do so. Officially, only BCE/BCG students take it. + a few other special cases (failed last sem? exchange students? etc.) Point is: there is a non-existent bellcurve T^T. And even the teaching style may be quite different from the overwhelming majority who took it in semester 1.
I guess DL is really trying to transition to self-directed e-learning. There are 2 LAMS lessons to do per week (For first half, you get marks for doing those lessons in a timely manner. For second half, There are no marks incentive so you can chiong all the remaining lessons at the last minute if you want.). You can keep redoing the questions until you got it correct so the 8% should be there. Outside this marks incentive, I appreciate their intentions to promote self-directed learning but the lessons may be quite time-wasting if we have to watch therecorded face-to-face lectures as well. Either one is useless, take your pick. I was so happy when they had LAMS at the start of the semester since I'm more of a self-directed learner (when I bother to. Nowadays I don't really bother to 😅.) and I could suffice with just skipping fast-forwarding to certain parts of the video to get the gist. But the videos were just unsurprisingly read from the lecture slides sigh...
The F2F lectures were better, I believe both lecturers use the lectures to tackle tougher concepts. Dr Chan would poll the students to see which topics the students felt like is harder. (Problem is due to my small cohort, there are at most 3 students present to represent the rest of us. LMAO sometimes they pick the most unnecessary topics to cover. At least they went for lectures...) Dr Vivek already knew which concepts are harder for his topics, so he has already prepared a separate set of better notes that the LAMS lessons did not have 😐.
For my cohort, there are only 2 tutorial classes, both taught by Dr Chan. (For semester 1, they definitely have way more tutors due to that semester's cohort size. But I have no indication on how good the other tutors are.) Dr Chan becomes your ride-or-die as a result. My opinion on her is mixed. She can be very good in some ways and not very good in other ways. What's good about her is that she actually teaches the concepts that you may have taken for granted in the course. Like really asking WHY for the foundational concepts. Sometimes also tweaking the questions in a manner to really stretch our bandwidth of knowledge, in the sense that you are now answering that question correctly because you know exactly why it is as such, and not just because you read the lecture notes that says so. So she's solid in her expertise I would say. However, communicating with her outside tutorial classes (via email, LAMS etc.) can be very painful. It just ends up with either her shooting you down, or she tries to answer but it ends up being a no-answer. So I guess she's good only when you encounter her face-to-face.
You have to go for lab. 32% right there! At least lab sessions here feels considerably more useful than any lab that I had last semester. You need to do 2 things (and show to the lab tech) for every lab session in order to consider your marks valid. And those 2 things aren't absolute giveaways or anything (considering the time constraint for lab as well), but definitely manageable. For the first half, you may consider going for free lab access (at your own time) if you suck at wires. For second half it's more of HDL, specifically Verilog. In layman (but not very correct) terms, it's like programming-like (not actually programming) for hardware. So you can spare the messy wires and write a more abstract digital circuit. You can find online Verilog tools to draft a code for the core functionality of what you want to do (while some other things are only available at the lab itself), so that you can save some time in the lab. I think having spare time in the lab helps since you will have a quiz later. More spare time in lab = more time studying for the quiz. The lab quiz uses Lockdown browser, only 10 minutes to answer 8 marks (4.4%) worth of short questions. The quiz is open-book anyway. Definitely do pay attention to whatever tf you're doing at lab as it'll be tested. Probably more lab questions than actual DL lecture contents. Note that for the content part tested in the quiz, the scope of the content is accumulative. ie. Don't forget your previous topic after a quiz, it can still be tested in subsequent quizzes. So I guess by the time we did the last quiz, it's kinda revising for finals already. The quizzes are generally manageable (time and difficulty wise), sans a few killer questions. Problem with students taking in sem 2 like me is that you error margin isn't exactly very high, due to the non-existent bellcurve. Really have to do your best, maybe even get full marks for the quizzes as much as possible.
Finals was quite a curveball for my cohort. The weird thing is I think I managed to handle the trick/killer questions properly but then I've also lost 12 whole marks for a very simple question just because I messed up the syntax. I don't think the trick questions were worth 12 marks so yea, I fucked up more than the people who couldn't do the trick questions, and that's assuming that I did those trick questions correctly. 😂 *I'm laughing but I'm actually crying right now moment*
CZ1006 - Computer Organisation and Architecture
Course coordinator/Lecturer: Assoc Prof Goh Wooi Boon, Mr Oh Hong Lye
Tutor: Dr (?) Smitha Kavallur Pisharath Gopi (Ok so her post is "Lecturer" but we didn't really know we normally just call all the tutors Prof just to be on the safe side.)
Assessment criteria: Lab quizzes (best 3 out of 4 quizzes, 40% in total), Finals (60%)
Content-wise, I didn't like this mod a lot. It's leaning towards the hardware side. Evidently, I see my CE friends struggling less and liking it more than my CS friends. But I guess in our perspective, we should still be equipped with this basic level of hardware knowledge, hence the mod. Despite my claim that it's "basic level of hardware knowledge", it's FARRR from it from the exam's perspective! It's very content heavy and memory intensive (especially second half), I hate dealing with those. But overall, I'm pleasantly surprised by my results.
Both lecturers use LAMS videos as e-lectures as wellwhat a huge waste of time, complemented with physical lectures. Frankly, I don't get Prof Goh's thought process 90% of the time when he teaches, so I skipped any forms of lecture recordings for the first half. But his contents aren't memory intensive. Basically you get this chart as your appendix and you understand what the chart is trying to do. Took me time to understand the logic of his topics but the summary chart (that they'll provide in exams) was a major asset! Another thing: The questions set by Prof Goh have a standard format every single semester! (I hope I didn't jinx it.) Just grind PYP to at least be halfway there. The other half is just knowing the logic for your actual year's paper, since the content can vary but at least can be logically deduced.
(BTW funny story: So I usually email my softcopy notes to my mum for her to print in the office, because my house's printer is shite. And then on one very bored weekend, my mum casually asked me if there's pictures of my profs. Yea we seriously ran out of conversation on that day. But so I did. I showed her Prof Goh's face and she said she saw him from somewhere! And I was mentally thinking "WTF mum where did you see him? Your past friend? Somewhere in your previous reincarnation or what?" And my mum just said "Every ppt slides you sent to me for this topic has his face..." 😂 Model of the story: Please remove his face every time you want to print his notes. Waste of spaceand scarring to the eyes.)
Ok and then there's Mr Oh. You must watch his videos, whether you get it or not. His content is memory intensive and almost everything you need to know superficially is on the ppt slides. But he also explains a lot that is not in the ppt slides (ie. from his own mouth). At times, I can't catch up with all his words no matter how many times I replayed (I'm not very good at solely auditory learning), but I still try to write down what I can and think about it later. I felt like I kinda botched his part in finals because I really didn't remember everything and yea, some things when forgotten is just ggwp marks gone.
As for tutorial, they won't touch exam-like questions, but it does help us know our content better. So I guess it's good for "lifelong learning". The answers are readily available so not surprising to see people not paying attention. But our tutor is pretty helpful I would say (overcoming the... I hate to say it... "accent barrier") she does know her thing and can explain it better than the lecturers sometimes. My table happened to be virtually right beside her so we could easily ask questions. And it happens that only my table is actually listening to her so my tutorial practically a consultation at this point.
The lab session itself is not graded, but there is still an incentive to do it, as the quiz at the end of the lab session is largely based on what we did in lab. The lab notes itself has a few "questions to ponder", which is basically what we need to know for the quiz. The quiz is open-book anyway so there is no need to memorise. The quizzes can be tricky though so even if you do your lab work conscientiously, you may still err somewhere. The only leeway is that they do not count the marks for your worst performing quiz, so you have 1 quiz that you may screw up. Nevertheless, it's better to try your best for all 4 quizzes. Wouldn't want to screw up 2 or more quizzes and taint the 40%, especially if most people can breeze through that 40% (on average my cohort got A- range for the quiz marks).
Disclaimer: I've totally burned out writing from this point on, so my writing is going to be sloppy :(
CZ1007 - Data Structures
Course coordinator/Lecturer: Assoc Prof Hui Siu Cheung, Dr (?) Owen Noel Newton Fernando
Tutor: Asst Prof Zinovi Rabinovich
Assessment criteria: Weekly assignments (20% total), 2 lab tests (2 * 40% = 80%)
I guess it's the most useful mod for this semester (but not like 100% I'm sure I will definitely need this kinda useful either) because there are actual programming elements. And it bridges to subsequent modules like OODP. Let's just call this "Crash course to C programming language".
First half is definitely more of C syntax. The basic stuffs for programming is more or less the same I guess. Probably the only noteworthy thing is knowing about pointers. Honestly I still hate pointers but it's easier to see its practicality when the second half comes. Otherwise, it's basic C syntax. Dr Hui is a pretty hilarious lecturer, but effectively gets the point across nonetheless. Only downside is screwing up my first lab test really bad. I panicked really badly at the hidden questions (basically you'll get 6 questions. 4 questions can bememorised practiced beforehand from a given list of questions and the other 2 are completely new questions.) and that jabbed my grades really badly. It was so bad that I hear people wanting to dabao this mod because of that one test T^T.
Second half is where the actual data structures come in. Linked list, stacks and queues, binary trees etc. Personally, (from watching recorded lectures) I don't really get Dr Owen. So I mostly learn by trying to read the slides (and a lot of Google!). Frankly I never really got to internalise the contents, I merely followed his methods without much thought (and it worked for the most part since his questions are more or less the same). It did kinda work for the lab test. This is NOT how anyone should be learning data structures T^T.
As for my tutor, I barely attend classes since he really isn't helpful at all. Technically, we do need to sign our attendance thoughbut whether you stay for the class is your own call. My tutor is the kind that just codes on the go, with zero lesson plan. Makes his thought process really incoherent as a result. The funny thing is: There was another DS class right beside ours. Since there is only a partition between both classes, those who actually attended classes just ran to the other class. I don't know what is the other tutor's name but I heard that she is useful (and actually prepares for the lessons). But I guess overall, it's obvious to say that I've taught myself Data Structures. One more step to independent learning... 😑
As mentioned above, there is no finals for Data Structures. There are weekly assignments that take up a total of 20%. If possible, try to aim for full marks (I didn't due to a pretty negligent mistake oh well...). You can use their APAS (where you upload your code) to check if you're correct for the sample test cases. Obviously if they don't give a 100% pass for sample test case, you're not doing it right. (Or it could be a very trivial error like one extra spacing in the output. BTW their marking criteria is matching the output exactly.) You have 2 weeks for each weekly assignment though, plenty of time to test it out. The 2 lab tests are definitely the big boys, and can make or break everyone's grades. If anything, those 2 tests kinda set the bell curve for everyone as well (assuming a lot of people can get close to full marks for weekly assignments).
Disclaimer: In subsequent semesters, they're moving towards e-lectures just like DL and COA. The teaching manner may be quite different as a result.
MH1812 - Discrete Mathematics
Course coordinator/Lecturer: Dr Gary Royden Watson Greaves
Teaching assistant (TA): Ms Xu Yanhong (?)
Assessment criteria: 2 lecture quizzes (2 * 25% = 50%), Finals (50%)
Not to be confused with MH1301 (also named "Discrete Mathematics) that's for the actual MAS students in there. This DM is specifically for SCSE students.
Ok to end off with what I personally feel like is one of my better mods for this semester. It may just be my slight inclination to math (and the lack of Chinese scholars destroying my bell curve) though. The lecturer was pretty good. Finally someone who can speak perfect English and he's not even from SCSE. (SCSE needs to up their game with their profs seriously. It's not about their accent. It's the way the profs convey their message...) And for his clear delivery I could speed up to 2.5x and hear him perfectly, 3.0x is enough to get his point already~ And his lectures are oddly short, had times where the recorded lecture was actually 30 minutes 😂 (so to speed it up, I'll take about 10~12 minutes)!
As for tutorial, we get TA who are post-grad students. Yea SPMS does have a lot of PRC post-grads (their flair for Math is really next level). And our TA is a PRC. I'm still not sure if I got her name right (I had to search up the post-grad students' directory and made an educated guess out of it~). She doesn't look like our TA to begin with and I honestly thought she's our fellow classmate upon first impression 😂 Ok but our TA has this really weird quirk of not writing on the whiteboards nearest to the centre (centre was projector screen so I'm referring to two whiteboards right beside the projector screen). It's either far left or far right. So it becomes a betting battle for us to sit at the right side. And her handwriting is small! Guys, for ME (my friends all know that my handwriting is very small) to say that her handwriting is small... it's seriously small! So we all resort to taking pictures of everything she writes and refer to it again when we go back. But anyway she actually does get the job done and teach us quite well I think. She starts off by doing a topical recap/crash course on what we're doing today. Bite-sized knowledge (coupled with her handwriting) in just one whiteboard~ Then she choose some groups to present our answers on the whiteboard sometimes and she'll mark and correct things from there, so that we can learn from our peers' answers on what and what not to do when answering. Better than just providing a model answer. Please do every question in your tutorial (or at least try). Not just the stated questions to discuss in tutorial since she might touch the questions that were not stated.
Ok there are "lab sessions" every fortnight, but it's not graded and it's FARRR from a lab session. It's like... some "example classes" just to talk about real-life application of Discrete Math. I didn't attend for these classes though. I find those 2 hours better spent elsewhere. But my friends (sometimes without an 's' at the back) who went said that it felt like a one-on-one consultation without the need to book with the TA. And apparently it's a different TA though but I wasn't there to know.
Ok onto the examinable components. The two lecture quizzes are done during our lecture timeslots, at a legit (smaller) exam hall. So it feels semi legit already. Apparently the semester 1 large cohort did the quiz in a big LT (and there were cheating cases...), so thanks to our course coordinator for being smart about it. I think it is possible to get full marks for both quizzes so please try! But our mean and median marks are lower than the larger cohort in sem 1. I'm making comparisons across the semesters since I think that makes a difference. Sem 1's course coordinator gave them easier papers + much more PRC scholars taking DM that time compared to my semester. So my semester is both a blessing (little PRC) and curse (harder papers).
Finals was definitely harder than the typical past year paper. There was only one other PYP that was equally hard and that was the only other semester that Dr Gary was the course coordinator 😂 Should've seen that coming instead of having a false sense of hope with the easier papers T^T. I really went in thinking that I can get the paper done in 1 hour and leave right after that, but the questions really made me stumble quite a lot and I was just making educated guesses for anything that I still can't do in the last 15 minutes.
I'm finally done writing after so many weeks! (It's really just me procrastinating though, writing bits of it and then getting distracted. But better late than never~) I can't attest for subsequent changes to the module though, so do take any advice of mine with a pinch of salt and just do your best! But with that, my year 1 is over! I'm moving on to year 2 soon! Looking forward to my shag (but really hopefully fulfilling) year 2 life~
Disclaimer (that I'll need to copy and paste forever): I am not a frequent lecture-goer. I tend to watch recorded online lectures instead and study at my own pace. So I will give inaccurate reviews about lectures.
And also, it's been at least a month since I've had any lessons. LMAO I just nua 120% after my exams. I may have forgotten some notable things to mention along the way.
Overview
Remember how I complained way too much about having too much finals? I've learnt the hard way that having too much finals is a blessing in disguise. Conversely, too little finals is very troubling! It means that you have too much assignments. I don't even think mid-terms existed in my dictionary because I am always preparing for a combination of assignments and quizzes every single week! I don't actually remember studying for finals at all until the week that my finals actually started. I guess it was a sigh of relief when finals week started (it's way less intense than my actual school term) but I mean I still botched my finals so... Not a good sign when you actually have an idea that you aren't even doing well for your continuous assignments...
Another thing. so from this semester onwards, my GPA for Business will be separate from my GPA for Com Science. With that, the extent that I botched my Business mods is too obvious T^T Not saying that I did amazing for Com Science though. But relative to Business, Com Science didn't feel half as disastrous.
I'm hoping that next semester (when I start having BA mods) would be better for Business. As for Com Science, I know next semester is very critical semester as well. Year 2 Sem 1 will really be a do-or-die semester so let's hope for the best! (And also I need to win the STAR Wars first. My ideal timetable that I've painstakingly made
AB0601 - Communication Management Fundamentals
Tutor: Ms Emma Jarman-Jones
Assessment criteria: Social Media Assessment (25%), Written Assessment - email (20%), Final Presentation (30%), Class Participation (25%)
The fact that this is a 2 AU mod is a blasphemy. I spent more time on this subject compared to the other actual core subjects that I should be learning in university. But this is a GER-Core subject so everyone has to do it. And in my case, it's counted in both Business and Com Science GPA #taintedGPA. Other faculties have their counterparts. Like SCSE has Engineering Communication I and II which is WAY easier than this NBS counterpart! My Com Science friends told me that they do pair work and just write a proposal or smth it's quite easy. But of course being a BCG student yea I signed up to mix with the merciless bunch of NBS students. I don't mean "merciless" with malicious intent, it's more like a lot of them really know how to talk, they are capable of talking a lot and actually doing a good job convincing others even if they need not know everything about the topic. Somehow all the NBS students have that skill except for me T^T Merciless is also an appropriate word for this subject as this is literally a "How to communicate" subject, obviously you talk or they can't evaluate you on anything!
There aren't any recommended tutors or anything (though I've heard speculations that ang mor teachers are more lenient in grading. Is my tutor considered lenient???). The bell curve is within your class, not across classes. Just impress your tutor in class, no holds barred. I think luck plays a small factor into your grades. It's ideal to get a lenient teacher + a peaceful class. I thought my prof is already relatively nice normally (but when she grades our assessment, I think it's like a whole different side of her fml 😂), can't say the same for my class. My prof didn't really care if we spout rubbish. I (like the rest of the people in my class...) am guilty of opening my mouth and contributing absolutely nothing but still getting class part marks for that. They just get a TA to track how many times each student opens their mouth.
IDK if this is a valid advice, but my core group of friends all went for different classes. So none of us end up slitting one another in the throat or smth fighting for class part 😂 I think that would be an unconventional but maybe feasible advice that I would give. At least everyone in your group of friends has a chance of doing well.
Onto the assessments. I don't have good tips to give, I think I botched those terribly which explains what happened to me now. To articulate how to be better at communication, it's really common sense. Practice a lot! And the remaining part is ad-lib on the spot. They have a Q&A segment for a reason. I know most people will say "Oh just get your classmates to plant Q&A for you lah!" but I don't have friends ok I just tried my best, 100% ad-lib.
To end off, something nice that my prof said. Just in case you are scared of public speaking and stuffs, just remember that your class has 4 walls, it's safe. Your classmates are equally scared, so everyone is on the same boat. Everyone suffers with you, so help one another out 😊
AB1601 - Organisational Behaviour and Design
Tutor: Mr Tan Kin Hock
Assessment criteria (fml I may not remember everything): Creative thinking assignment (20%), critical thinking assignment (20%), competency based assessment (20%), quizzes (4 * 5% = 20%), team presentation (5%), peer evaluation (5%), class participation (6%), research participation (4%).
Now I hope that adds up to 100% I am not even sure!
The course coordinator, Dr Koh, is high key gone up his mind. There is way too much to do for a subject that is... "a fluff mod". There isn't finals for this so the weightage for finals has been split up like... this. To be honest, I don't see the usefulness of this subject unless I'm considering HR specialisation. The way the subject has been taught reinforces that idea of mine as well. Unfortunately, we just have to take all these year 1 core mods in NBS, even those not related to BA that I'll be taking from year 2 onwards.
What you learn are really common sense stuffs like "individual differences in personality", "teamwork", "leadership" etc. Things that you shouldn't even have a core subject for! The funny part is trying to study for the quizzes. You'll look through the notes and go "... What the f*ck am I studying for? This is common sense." but still screwing it up at the end.
Both creative and critical thinking assignments are really time-consuming. It's barely related to the actual things you learn in this subject as well, if you actually learn anything in the first place. Both assignments are marked internally by your own tutor, so just impress your tutor. For my tutor, I don't even know what's his benchmark of impressive. I felt like he went by feel when he marked the assignment. So if he liked the points in his biased and subjective opinion, you're fine. But otherwise you can beef up your points/ideas so much and he'll still mark you down if he doesn't agree with it. We get comments for our assignments but it didn't help at all if he just copied comments across students (eg. all A- students will get comment 1, all B+ students get comment 2 etc. without any personalisation). If anyone has interest in how I fare, just know that (i) for the assignment that I bs too much about, he liked it and I did fine, and; (ii) on the other hand, the assignment that I put in so much effort for bombed so...
The only easy points to get is the "research participation", which sounds daunting by its name, but you basically just go for a total of 2 hours (not consecutively, they wouldn't allow even if you want to) and just do surveys, mini-tests/games for the NBS researchers to use. It's made to be a win-win. You have one whole semester to get those chill 2 hours. Otherwise, you can write 2 research reports. The latter stipulation is just to mandate us to just participate in their research, plain and simple, making it a win-win for both students and the research staffs in NBS.
AD1101 - Financial Accounting
Tutor: Assoc Prof Clement Tan (also the course coordinator 😊)
Assessment criteria: Class participation (15%), Team project (15%), Cengage test (5%, one off), LAMS questions (7% in total, weekly), Cengage questions (8% in total, weekly), Finals (50%)
At least this burdensome 4AU mod felt a little more useful. But very complicated. Unlike my mum, I'm really not good at accounting.
Ok where to break it down? Technically, your 1 AU worth of "lectures" (other 3 AUs for seminar classes) comes from the weekly LAMS and Cengage. The LAMS videos are technically your "lecture recordings", by Prof Anil. And it's really bad. I could rant about his slipshod work forever but to summarise, he's reading off from the powerpoint slides and BTW those slides do nothing to help you answer the graded LAMS and Cengage questions. You get a penalty for messing up your LAMS questions in your first (and maybe only) try simply because they didn't teach you well. Say goodbye to 7%. At least you can retry Cengage questions without penalty and you have 3 chances to verify each question's answers in every attempt.
My tutor is really really good! I would highly recommend you to be in Prof Tan's class.
Prof Tan does a lot for the students outside his seminars as well. He happily accepts email Q&A. By email Q&A, you can ask him seminar questions. By seminar questions, it's past year paper questions. So if I say that Prof Tan does answer email Q&A... you get my point 😉 Even though the school policy forbids answers to be given for past year papers. Basically he found a legal detour to help us handle past year papers. Another reason why he prefers email over one-on-one consultation is because he can easily share his email reply to all his over students on NTULearn! He intends to maximise the number of students to benefit from his help, so he shares those email Q&A across all his 4 seminar groups 👍
Next, team project. I like my team because it's my core group of friends mah 😂 The content of the team project is cancerous though. We had to water down our hardwork into 5 pages (with double spacing and all the specifications against us to make it the sloppiest 5 pages ever) that can barely cover anything. 48 hours of hardwork by all of us and we're so proud of it! Although the marker, none other than only (yep only 1 marker for the whole cohort because "consistency" but wouldn't that include getting sian of marking for the later groups?) Prof Anil, says otherwise. I think the team project results dampen our whole group's overall grade 😠 But nevertheless, at least our group has the right feel~
Now onto the finals! Ok I had one major botch: I totally forgot what FRS 115 does. I lost 15 marks for that 😂 That's 7.5% of overall grades gone *dies inside*. Otherwise, other than mistakes that are oversight on my part, the other questions didn't felt too onerous. They are broken down into more parts (ie. lesser marks per part, ie. lesser marks gone for screwing up a part). I think my finals are pretty shit, but not as shit as group project grades. At least it's the shit that managed to pull up my disastrous group project grades.
CZ1005 - Digital Logic
Course coordinator/Lecturer: Assoc Prof Chan Syin, Dr Vivek Chaturvedi
Tutor: Prof Chan Syin
Assessment criteria: Lab quizzes (5 * 4.4% = 22%), Lab work (5 * 2% = 10%), LAMS questions (8% total), Finals (60%)
If you take DL in semester 2, you're in an overwhelming minority of students to do so. Officially, only BCE/BCG students take it. + a few other special cases (failed last sem? exchange students? etc.) Point is: there is a non-existent bellcurve T^T. And even the teaching style may be quite different from the overwhelming majority who took it in semester 1.
I guess DL is really trying to transition to self-directed e-learning. There are 2 LAMS lessons to do per week (For first half, you get marks for doing those lessons in a timely manner. For second half, There are no marks incentive so you can chiong all the remaining lessons at the last minute if you want.). You can keep redoing the questions until you got it correct so the 8% should be there. Outside this marks incentive, I appreciate their intentions to promote self-directed learning but the lessons may be quite time-wasting if we have to watch the
The F2F lectures were better, I believe both lecturers use the lectures to tackle tougher concepts. Dr Chan would poll the students to see which topics the students felt like is harder. (Problem is due to my small cohort, there are at most 3 students present to represent the rest of us. LMAO sometimes they pick the most unnecessary topics to cover. At least they went for lectures...) Dr Vivek already knew which concepts are harder for his topics, so he has already prepared a separate set of better notes that the LAMS lessons did not have 😐.
For my cohort, there are only 2 tutorial classes, both taught by Dr Chan. (For semester 1, they definitely have way more tutors due to that semester's cohort size. But I have no indication on how good the other tutors are.) Dr Chan becomes your ride-or-die as a result. My opinion on her is mixed. She can be very good in some ways and not very good in other ways. What's good about her is that she actually teaches the concepts that you may have taken for granted in the course. Like really asking WHY for the foundational concepts. Sometimes also tweaking the questions in a manner to really stretch our bandwidth of knowledge, in the sense that you are now answering that question correctly because you know exactly why it is as such, and not just because you read the lecture notes that says so. So she's solid in her expertise I would say. However, communicating with her outside tutorial classes (via email, LAMS etc.) can be very painful. It just ends up with either her shooting you down, or she tries to answer but it ends up being a no-answer. So I guess she's good only when you encounter her face-to-face.
You have to go for lab. 32% right there! At least lab sessions here feels considerably more useful than any lab that I had last semester. You need to do 2 things (and show to the lab tech) for every lab session in order to consider your marks valid. And those 2 things aren't absolute giveaways or anything (considering the time constraint for lab as well), but definitely manageable. For the first half, you may consider going for free lab access (at your own time) if you suck at wires. For second half it's more of HDL, specifically Verilog. In layman (but not very correct) terms, it's like programming-like (not actually programming) for hardware. So you can spare the messy wires and write a more abstract digital circuit. You can find online Verilog tools to draft a code for the core functionality of what you want to do (while some other things are only available at the lab itself), so that you can save some time in the lab. I think having spare time in the lab helps since you will have a quiz later. More spare time in lab = more time studying for the quiz. The lab quiz uses Lockdown browser, only 10 minutes to answer 8 marks (4.4%) worth of short questions. The quiz is open-book anyway. Definitely do pay attention to whatever tf you're doing at lab as it'll be tested. Probably more lab questions than actual DL lecture contents. Note that for the content part tested in the quiz, the scope of the content is accumulative. ie. Don't forget your previous topic after a quiz, it can still be tested in subsequent quizzes. So I guess by the time we did the last quiz, it's kinda revising for finals already. The quizzes are generally manageable (time and difficulty wise), sans a few killer questions. Problem with students taking in sem 2 like me is that you error margin isn't exactly very high, due to the non-existent bellcurve. Really have to do your best, maybe even get full marks for the quizzes as much as possible.
Finals was quite a curveball for my cohort. The weird thing is I think I managed to handle the trick/killer questions properly but then I've also lost 12 whole marks for a very simple question just because I messed up the syntax. I don't think the trick questions were worth 12 marks so yea, I fucked up more than the people who couldn't do the trick questions, and that's assuming that I did those trick questions correctly. 😂 *I'm laughing but I'm actually crying right now moment*
CZ1006 - Computer Organisation and Architecture
Course coordinator/Lecturer: Assoc Prof Goh Wooi Boon, Mr Oh Hong Lye
Tutor: Dr (?) Smitha Kavallur Pisharath Gopi (Ok so her post is "Lecturer" but we didn't really know we normally just call all the tutors Prof just to be on the safe side.)
Assessment criteria: Lab quizzes (best 3 out of 4 quizzes, 40% in total), Finals (60%)
Content-wise, I didn't like this mod a lot. It's leaning towards the hardware side. Evidently, I see my CE friends struggling less and liking it more than my CS friends. But I guess in our perspective, we should still be equipped with this basic level of hardware knowledge, hence the mod. Despite my claim that it's "basic level of hardware knowledge", it's FARRR from it from the exam's perspective! It's very content heavy and memory intensive (especially second half), I hate dealing with those. But overall, I'm pleasantly surprised by my results.
Both lecturers use LAMS videos as e-lectures as well
(BTW funny story: So I usually email my softcopy notes to my mum for her to print in the office, because my house's printer is shite. And then on one very bored weekend, my mum casually asked me if there's pictures of my profs. Yea we seriously ran out of conversation on that day. But so I did. I showed her Prof Goh's face and she said she saw him from somewhere! And I was mentally thinking "WTF mum where did you see him? Your past friend? Somewhere in your previous reincarnation or what?" And my mum just said "Every ppt slides you sent to me for this topic has his face..." 😂 Model of the story: Please remove his face every time you want to print his notes. Waste of space
Ok and then there's Mr Oh. You must watch his videos, whether you get it or not. His content is memory intensive and almost everything you need to know superficially is on the ppt slides. But he also explains a lot that is not in the ppt slides (ie. from his own mouth). At times, I can't catch up with all his words no matter how many times I replayed (I'm not very good at solely auditory learning), but I still try to write down what I can and think about it later. I felt like I kinda botched his part in finals because I really didn't remember everything and yea, some things when forgotten is just ggwp marks gone.
As for tutorial, they won't touch exam-like questions, but it does help us know our content better. So I guess it's good for "lifelong learning". The answers are readily available so not surprising to see people not paying attention. But our tutor is pretty helpful I would say (overcoming the... I hate to say it... "accent barrier") she does know her thing and can explain it better than the lecturers sometimes. My table happened to be virtually right beside her so we could easily ask questions. And it happens that only my table is actually listening to her so my tutorial practically a consultation at this point.
The lab session itself is not graded, but there is still an incentive to do it, as the quiz at the end of the lab session is largely based on what we did in lab. The lab notes itself has a few "questions to ponder", which is basically what we need to know for the quiz. The quiz is open-book anyway so there is no need to memorise. The quizzes can be tricky though so even if you do your lab work conscientiously, you may still err somewhere. The only leeway is that they do not count the marks for your worst performing quiz, so you have 1 quiz that you may screw up. Nevertheless, it's better to try your best for all 4 quizzes. Wouldn't want to screw up 2 or more quizzes and taint the 40%, especially if most people can breeze through that 40% (on average my cohort got A- range for the quiz marks).
Disclaimer: I've totally burned out writing from this point on, so my writing is going to be sloppy :(
CZ1007 - Data Structures
Course coordinator/Lecturer: Assoc Prof Hui Siu Cheung, Dr (?) Owen Noel Newton Fernando
Tutor: Asst Prof Zinovi Rabinovich
Assessment criteria: Weekly assignments (20% total), 2 lab tests (2 * 40% = 80%)
I guess it's the most useful mod for this semester (but not like 100% I'm sure I will definitely need this kinda useful either) because there are actual programming elements. And it bridges to subsequent modules like OODP. Let's just call this "Crash course to C programming language".
First half is definitely more of C syntax. The basic stuffs for programming is more or less the same I guess. Probably the only noteworthy thing is knowing about pointers. Honestly I still hate pointers but it's easier to see its practicality when the second half comes. Otherwise, it's basic C syntax. Dr Hui is a pretty hilarious lecturer, but effectively gets the point across nonetheless. Only downside is screwing up my first lab test really bad. I panicked really badly at the hidden questions (basically you'll get 6 questions. 4 questions can be
Second half is where the actual data structures come in. Linked list, stacks and queues, binary trees etc. Personally, (from watching recorded lectures) I don't really get Dr Owen. So I mostly learn by trying to read the slides (and a lot of Google!). Frankly I never really got to internalise the contents, I merely followed his methods without much thought (and it worked for the most part since his questions are more or less the same). It did kinda work for the lab test. This is NOT how anyone should be learning data structures T^T.
As for my tutor, I barely attend classes since he really isn't helpful at all. Technically, we do need to sign our attendance though
As mentioned above, there is no finals for Data Structures. There are weekly assignments that take up a total of 20%. If possible, try to aim for full marks (I didn't due to a pretty negligent mistake oh well...). You can use their APAS (where you upload your code) to check if you're correct for the sample test cases. Obviously if they don't give a 100% pass for sample test case, you're not doing it right. (Or it could be a very trivial error like one extra spacing in the output. BTW their marking criteria is matching the output exactly.) You have 2 weeks for each weekly assignment though, plenty of time to test it out. The 2 lab tests are definitely the big boys, and can make or break everyone's grades. If anything, those 2 tests kinda set the bell curve for everyone as well (assuming a lot of people can get close to full marks for weekly assignments).
Disclaimer: In subsequent semesters, they're moving towards e-lectures just like DL and COA. The teaching manner may be quite different as a result.
MH1812 - Discrete Mathematics
Course coordinator/Lecturer: Dr Gary Royden Watson Greaves
Teaching assistant (TA): Ms Xu Yanhong (?)
Assessment criteria: 2 lecture quizzes (2 * 25% = 50%), Finals (50%)
Not to be confused with MH1301 (also named "Discrete Mathematics) that's for the actual MAS students in there. This DM is specifically for SCSE students.
Ok to end off with what I personally feel like is one of my better mods for this semester. It may just be my slight inclination to math (and the lack of Chinese scholars destroying my bell curve) though. The lecturer was pretty good. Finally someone who can speak perfect English and he's not even from SCSE. (SCSE needs to up their game with their profs seriously. It's not about their accent. It's the way the profs convey their message...) And for his clear delivery I could speed up to 2.5x and hear him perfectly, 3.0x is enough to get his point already~ And his lectures are oddly short, had times where the recorded lecture was actually 30 minutes 😂 (so to speed it up, I'll take about 10~12 minutes)!
As for tutorial, we get TA who are post-grad students. Yea SPMS does have a lot of PRC post-grads (their flair for Math is really next level). And our TA is a PRC. I'm still not sure if I got her name right (I had to search up the post-grad students' directory and made an educated guess out of it~). She doesn't look like our TA to begin with and I honestly thought she's our fellow classmate upon first impression 😂 Ok but our TA has this really weird quirk of not writing on the whiteboards nearest to the centre (centre was projector screen so I'm referring to two whiteboards right beside the projector screen). It's either far left or far right. So it becomes a betting battle for us to sit at the right side. And her handwriting is small! Guys, for ME (my friends all know that my handwriting is very small) to say that her handwriting is small... it's seriously small! So we all resort to taking pictures of everything she writes and refer to it again when we go back. But anyway she actually does get the job done and teach us quite well I think. She starts off by doing a topical recap/crash course on what we're doing today. Bite-sized knowledge (coupled with her handwriting) in just one whiteboard~ Then she choose some groups to present our answers on the whiteboard sometimes and she'll mark and correct things from there, so that we can learn from our peers' answers on what and what not to do when answering. Better than just providing a model answer. Please do every question in your tutorial (or at least try). Not just the stated questions to discuss in tutorial since she might touch the questions that were not stated.
Ok there are "lab sessions" every fortnight, but it's not graded and it's FARRR from a lab session. It's like... some "example classes" just to talk about real-life application of Discrete Math. I didn't attend for these classes though. I find those 2 hours better spent elsewhere. But my friends (sometimes without an 's' at the back) who went said that it felt like a one-on-one consultation without the need to book with the TA. And apparently it's a different TA though but I wasn't there to know.
Ok onto the examinable components. The two lecture quizzes are done during our lecture timeslots, at a legit (smaller) exam hall. So it feels semi legit already. Apparently the semester 1 large cohort did the quiz in a big LT (and there were cheating cases...), so thanks to our course coordinator for being smart about it. I think it is possible to get full marks for both quizzes so please try! But our mean and median marks are lower than the larger cohort in sem 1. I'm making comparisons across the semesters since I think that makes a difference. Sem 1's course coordinator gave them easier papers + much more PRC scholars taking DM that time compared to my semester. So my semester is both a blessing (little PRC) and curse (harder papers).
Finals was definitely harder than the typical past year paper. There was only one other PYP that was equally hard and that was the only other semester that Dr Gary was the course coordinator 😂 Should've seen that coming instead of having a false sense of hope with the easier papers T^T. I really went in thinking that I can get the paper done in 1 hour and leave right after that, but the questions really made me stumble quite a lot and I was just making educated guesses for anything that I still can't do in the last 15 minutes.
I'm finally done writing after so many weeks! (It's really just me procrastinating though, writing bits of it and then getting distracted. But better late than never~) I can't attest for subsequent changes to the module though, so do take any advice of mine with a pinch of salt and just do your best! But with that, my year 1 is over! I'm moving on to year 2 soon! Looking forward to my shag (but really hopefully fulfilling) year 2 life~
Hello!!! I'm also a BCG student enrolling in 2 years time. May I know if we can choose our specialisation for business? Thank you :)
ReplyDeleteHi. Unfortunately, you can't choose your Business specialisation. Taking BA as your specialisation is kinda essential to help students clear both degrees in 4 years, since there are a lot of overlapping going on.
DeleteHope you have fun in BCG :)