Module Reviews For Year 1, Semester 1 (AY2015/2016)

Now that results are out, I think I might be a bit more suitable to do a module review for people out there who are curious and may have to choose these modules. I did quite okay for this semester but I will not publish my results. Please read if you want to get some information but do that it with a pinch of salt as different people have different abilities and I might not be representative of the cohort. If you want to read just about the finals, go to this post as this module review post is pretty lengthy. On a side note, even though some papers like CS1010E might allow graphing calculators (GC), do buy a scientific calculator as all mechanical engineering modules cannot use GC other than the 2 math mods (MA1505 and MA1506).

Check out my other module reviews:
Year 1 Sem 2
Year 2 Sem 1
Year 2 Sem 2
Year 3 Sem 1

Modules taken:

PC1431 Physics IE:

Difficulty: 3/10 (Manageable) (at least for me)

This module is sort of an extension of "A" Levels physics. We learn about kinematics, Newton's Laws, Energy, Momentum, Rotational motion of rigid bodies and thermodynamics. If you still remember your jc stuff, good for you as you can build on the knowledge. Which was what I did. What my professor said was true, the first half of the semester, the module is okay, manageable, but the learning curve increases after your mid terms where the rotational motion of rigid bodies and thermodynamics come in. As they are new concepts, the fast paced university life might catch slow learners off guard. However, practise is important and it will certainly help you to understand.

Module breakdown:
Online quiz: 10%
Labs: 10% (5% + 5%)
Mid term: 20%
Finals: 60%

Lectures:
My lecturer went through the topics slower than the other professors and I heard some professors do live demonstrations of some experiments which mine did not have. However, I still find that mine explains the topics very well and is good. There is no webcast for any of the lecture groups. So please do attend all lectures even though some might be at 8am.

Tutorials:
Tutorials occur once every 2 weeks. I believe the tutorials are insufficient but at least the tutor is good and she explains very clearly to me. The tutors help us do the past year final exam papers which makes up for the lack of tutorials. Tutorials are not graded but it is good to go.

Labs:
There are 2 lab sessions of which one is on the principle of conservation of linear momentum and the other is on the heat engine. Lab sessions are 3 hours which you will have to finish your experiment and collect the data. I am not sure if all lab reports can be submitted by the next day, but mine was able to do so which allow us to concentrate of conducting the experiment and the writing of lab report can be postponed to be done at home or outside of the lab session. The lab assistant will come and ask you questions for your understanding of the topic which is also part of the marks for labs, so be prepared before your lab sessions.

Online Quiz:
There are hints for the online quizzes but there is a penalty for every hint. Marks will be deducted for every mistake made too and up to 5 mistakes can be made before a 0 is awarded as your marks. Thus, it is usually better if you gather your friends and do with one another to ensure that you will get more marks.

Midterms:
The mid term paper is 20 MCQs. The difficulty is medium. Plan your time well as some questions are pretty tricky and tough

Finals:
6 short answer questions and 3 long answer questions. Difficulty is medium. Finals will not be easy. Ensure you have enough practice and have of good understanding of the topics tested.


CS1010E Programming Methodology:

Difficulty: 8/10

This module is programming in C language. If you have not touched any programming before, it will be hell. The learning curve is steep. However, if you have programming background, this module will be a breeze. difficulty level of 0/10. I always thought the E for the module means either for engineering students or it just means easy, as the one without E seems harder. That is not true. I had a bit programming background but I did not go through proper training, I just followed Codeacademy for python but I forgot everything about Python already.

Module breakdown:
Labs: 20% (open book)
Tutorial participation: 5%
Practical assessment: 15% (closed book)
Mid term: 20% (closed book)
Final: 40% (closed book)

Lectures:
Our professor is an entertaining guy and keeps us engaged during the lecture. However, he had some course which caused a swap in lecturer for about half of the topics. The lectures became more boring and there is webcast for all the lectures. Even though the first lecturer said he will not upload any webcast, he did in the end but do go for your lectures.

Tutorials:
We engineering students are quite passive and the tutor was not able to get us to participate so he implemented a system where students will have to present their code for the tutorial questions for the tutorial participation marks. So for us we will be notified through email which questions we will have to present before hand so that we can prepare for the questions. My tutor told us to use ideone to present, but other tutors might want you to present your answers in MinGw.

Labs:
Our labs are guided by a lab assistant for my case it is a year 2 senior but he is knowledgeable and very helpful so I did not have to worry. We can ask him any questions and he will try his best to help us. The first lab is just a familiarisation lab session which is a free 2%. The subsequent lab sessions, they will choose the 2 best score out of 3 for 6% 3 times. Which means for example week 1, 2, 3 is one group, 4, 5, 6 will be another and so on. So within the group, they will choose the 2 best score and the best six scores will make up the 18%. I hope I did not confuse you.

Lab questions are in levels. Usually level 1 is the one which they want you to scanf user input values and maybe printf the values out. There are usually 5 levels and if you are good, you can just go straight to level 5 and submit. If you code pass the system and and manage to pass the hidden inputs that our professor adds in then you will get the score for level 5. Otherwise, they will choose the next best level which is usually your level 4. Thus, the strategy is to slowly build up your code by doing all the different levels to protect yourself from the unseen test cases. The good thing about our lab is that we are able to bring home our code and submit the codes by 2359 of that particular day. So we are not limited by the short 2 hours given.

Practical assessment:
Ours was pretty tough, it is the same format as the lab questions but in this case, you will be unable to ask your lab assistant or your friends for help. There is no internet connection in the computer lab also, so there is no chance of you googling for the answer. I was stuck at level 3/5 which I think was the average for the class. Do try to practise typing your code on Sunfire or even on MinGw so that you are used to the interface.

Mid term:
10 MCQ questions. The questions are very tedious and ours were about finding the pattern so we had to trace and spend a lot of time. To me, the mid term was manageable which might have made me complacent for my finals.

Finals:
10 MCQ question, 2 short answer questions and 2 open ended questions. According to our professor, the format changes every year as he likes to test different formats. For us, if you have read about me ranting about the finals on my previous post, so sorry, I will type it here again. The final paper is very very very tough. I left close to half the marks of the paper blank. It is not that I want to leave them blank, but I have really no idea how to do it, or even what to write. Looking back, even if I studied for this module, I might not be better off also. Good luck to you if you are taking this module. However, if you have programming experience, it should be a breeze.


GER1000 Quantitative Reasoning:

Difficulty: 3/10

This module is new and my batch is the pioneer batch. Many things are pretty vague and we did not know what was going on. Hopefully it will be improved with time. The hardest and the most consuming part of this module will be the project.

Module breakdown:
Tutorial participation: 10%
Onlne quiz: 5%
Group project: 30%
Mid term: 25%
Finals: 30%

Lectures:
There is not physical lecture. All lectures are online videos but they are downloadable. There are different lecturers for different topics, so you will have to get used to it. There will be slides and scripts which are downloadable to help in the understanding of the lectures.

Tutorials:
Tutorial is once every 2 weeks and you have to do and discuss during lessons. The tutor will use a random number generator to select a person in each group to present. Those groups are your group members for your project.

Online quiz:
The system will select the latest submitted answer for each quiz, so be careful not to accidentally press the quiz if you have already submitted. Quiz questions are tricky and sometimes the professors like to phrase the options in a certain way to make it harder to choose. Do select the most appropriate answer. As usual, you will be able to gather all your friends to help each other.

Group Project:
The project is really vague to us, we are supposed to submit an executive summary of 2 pages and a poster online and print it out for presentation. The project requirements are really vague and we took a few weeks to sort of understand what was actually required.


Mid terms:
14 MCQs. As there is sufficient time, do make use of the time to check through all your answers. The difficulty is fairly easy.


Finals:
24MCQs. As there is sufficient time, do make use of the time to check through all your answers. The difficulty is fairly easy. This paper is the only final paper for all the modules where I am able to walk out of the examination hall before the official end time. You might think that I am arrogant but it is true, many people walk out of the hall before me and it is certainly not due to the paper being overly difficult.


MA1505 Mathematics I:

Difficulty: 8/10

I have not touch math for a long time and after going through 2 years of army, I had not touch any math for close to 3 years. With a mouldy brain, it is hard to start to think and work on math problems. However, girls have an advantage here. One of my female friend can remember most of her jc stuff which are the fundamentals. For us, without the fundamentals, I struggled with this course.

Module breakdown:
Mid terms: 20%
Finals: 80%

Lectures:
Lectures are pretty boring. However, they are essential because I could not bring myself to watch the webcast lectures. All lectures are webcasted but it is still better to attend. I did not attend after the second half of the semester and I suffered terribly. I could not catch up at all and I did not understand what was going on. It took me a long time before I managed to be able to do some tutorial questions.

Tutorials:
Tutorial questions are usually doable until the last question which is really tough, most people go for tutorials just for the last question but many people just give it a miss as they can do the whole tutorial and do not require any help.

Mid terms:
10MCQs. I find it very tough. However, I heard many people score very well and the average was 7.03/10. So I guess I am the few who cannot do math. And...I still want to do engineering. How ironic, an engineer that cannot do math.

Finals:
8 long answer questions with 2 parts to each questions so it is as though there are 16 questions. I left quite a few questions blank, about 4 parts. As usual there are people who can do, so my assessment of this difficulty is tough, but it may not be true for the masses.


EG1109M Statics and Mechanics of Materials:
(I heard that this module will be removed soon and all future mechanical engineering students will take CE1109 or EG1109 (can't remember), hopefully this review will still be useful)

Diffculty: 9000+++/10 (OVER 9000!!!!)

To me, the difficulty is very high as it is a relatively new topic for me. The module is split into 2 parts, the statics part which is very close to the physics that we learn in junior college with some stuff added in but the mechanics part is entirely new.

Module breakdown:
Midterms: 10%
Finals: 50%
Project: 15%
Online quiz: 15%
Tutorial assignment: 10%

Lectures:
Statics: The lecture is very boring but you will still have to listen. However the good thing is, there is webcast so if you don't understand or you missed it, you can always review the videos.
Mechanics: The lecture is more interactive and the lecturer is strict. Because of that, sometimes the lectures may drag and be prepared to go for extra lectures or lectures with extended periods. There is NO webcast for these lectures. If you miss it, you die. Lecture notes have to be bought and there is no soft copy.

Tutorials:
For our batch, there are only 4 tutorials which I think is insufficient for this relatively new topic for us. Be expected to submit one of the tutorial question as a graded assignment. For all questions in this module, Free Body Diagram is a must.

Online Quiz:
There were hints provided and there is no penalty for using them. For the first few assignments, the hints were like answers but with different values. If you have no idea how to do, just follow the steps and change the values, and the answer will be correct. However, the last few assignments had hints but were not comprehensive. In the end, you have to refer to your notes and get used to doing those questions before you can solve. The good thing about these questions is you can check your answer with the system and not get any marks deducted. The system also takes the best score (or the latest score, I cannot remember). As with all online quizzes, you can always ask your friend to help you.

Project:
The project is about how you design a bridge based on the given requirements. This requires you to submit a written report of maximum 20 pages and a presentation. I would suggest you to work on it earlier as many of us forgot about it and did it last minute which causes our grades to suffer.

Midterms:
2 open ended questions. Difficulty is tough. Our teaching assistant marked our paper leniently but it is subjective, so do not depend on this. Make sure you study hard for it and expect the unexpected. Even though it is of a small percentage to your overall score, make sure your foundation is good so that you will suffer less. The paper is not easy to me but as usual, there will always be people who do well and get full marks.

Finals:
4 open ended questions and all are compulsory. Difficulty is tough. I was told previously if you can ensure that you get at least 2 questions full marks, you will get good grades. How true is that? I am not sure as I did not know how to do the questions. For my year, the questions were more doable but the lack of understanding did not help me to do well for this module. So, work hard!

I will like to promote my friend's app from DanbooruWorks as the downloads are quite pathetic. The apps are:
Prix - CompareFirst is not just another shopping app!
PriceText – Price searching and comparing made easier

Please do try them and if they are good, do support by using them more often!