NUS AY2014/15 Semester Two (Modules Review Part II)
Continued from my previous post, where I spoke too much on my capstone project, oops!
In this post: IEM2201E, PL3283B, PL3232, PL3233
1. IEM2201E Ethics in Outer Space
Somehow or rather, IEM2 feels much easier than IEM1 (to me). I love this module, because it deals with applied ethics (something philosophical) and we speculate on how things should (or should not be) in outer space.
This module was taught by Dr. Victor Cole, a very nice guy who loves his field of study. He has tons of books in his office regarding philosophy, transhumanism, ethics, etc. etc. I remember one day during consultation, he randomly went off-topic and told me that he watched a really good movie that showed how bad psychological practices were in the past (because he knew I am a psychology major, lol). This module is one of the 5 modules to take to fulfill the requirements for the UTCP. There are many other IEM2s to take, but every IEM2 has the same assessment structure.
Annotated Bibliography (15%), Research Proposal (25%), Research Paper (40%), 2x Presentations (10%), Class attendance and participation (10%)
There are 2x two-hour tutorials per week, and you have to come prepared with your readings (okay, maybe not). I tried to read my readings before each lesson, but after a while I failed. At the first/second tutorial (I don’t remember already) we have to choose a presentation slot. Each tutorial session in the first half of the semester is student presentations. You basically have to read the readings and teach your classmates what the topic is about. At the end of 4 weeks, we basically covered everything we need to cover for the whole of the module: consequentialism, deontological ethics, virtue ethics, principlism, environmental ethics, and social ethics.
The workload is very manageable. You can don’t do the readings, and then do it last minute, or only read those that interest you (what’s the point, you don’t learn.. but it works) Just be on task and produce your deliverables on time, which all builds up to your final product - the research paper. The annotated bibliography requires you to read your required readings and write on how it will be useful towards your research paper (yes, you need to have an idea of what you wish to write, right from the start of the module. best to have an idea of your research topic around week 3/4) By week 10 of the semester, we no longer have formal tutorial sessions, and we merely have to sign up for consultation slots. This takes away 4 hours of lessons from my timetable per week from week 10 onward!! awesome.
There is no examinations, and final submission for your research paper is end of week 13 (I am done with my paper, after one round of consultation, around 4-5 days before submission, and just upload it to turnitin when the submission folder is open). Oh yes, Prof Cole likes to use turnitin for us to submit our essays. I guess other IEMs also do use it to check for plagiarism.. It’s quite cool - you get to see exactly which lines are “plagiarized” and where you plagiarized it from. Prof Cole allowed us to have resubmissions on the turnitin system to check for plagiarism before our final submission =)
Overall: I really enjoyed this module, much easier than the IEM1 that I took last year. A lot of free time for myself in this module, and things will go very smoothly for you if you can come up with a research topic right from the start of the module.
Why you should take this module: because you like philosophy, and would like to learn more about the various ethical approach towards tackling problems in society. In this case, the “problem” is in the context of outer space. If you love issues surrounding space exploration, adapting humans to space environment, bring humans to Mars for permanent settlements etc. then this is the module for you! =)
Do not take this module if: you don’t want to learn philosophy, or you are just generally bad at writing.
Predicted grade: B+ (my individual assignments have never crossed the 80% mark, so I doubt it will reach an A-)
UPDATE: A-! My overall score was a 77%, which is sufficient to constitute as an A-, if there were no bell curve!
2. PL3283B Lab in Development of Communication
This is one of the many psychology laboratory modules to take, to fulfill your graduation requirements for a psychology major. I decided to take a lab module in my year 2, because I do not have the capacity to do so in my year 3 due to other plans (and year 4 would be too late). It cost me 999 bid points. If you are a year 3, you would have gotten it via MPE. Poor me (literally).
Development of communication? This module is taught by A/P Leher Singh, and her research field is very special and specific - infant language development. She has written many papers on how infants process language and develop their vocabulary, etc. This module is all about her research field.
Without discrediting the prof, I proclaim that this is my worst module for this semester. There is no directed learning, and you can easily ignore your weekly 3-hour lab sessions and design an experiment for your research project (without reference to the lab’s content) that constitutes 45% of your grades. 35% comes from a group (of 2) presentation, and 20% from your attendance and participation (she doesn’t even remember names, I think, as she has to go through the nominal roll each time to take attendance, how does she take note of our participation?) I meant to take this lab to do the research project with my friend, but it turns out that she decided to change it to individual research project, and therefore you have to do everything yourself: literature review, data collection, report writing. well well well.. the difficulty level for the research project is extremely difficulty because you have to deal with infants or kids, and I had to frantically ask around my friends for willing participants of aged 2-5 years old for my research study.
The workload, however, is very light, because you can choose to ignore the readings or only read those that you are interested in. What matters most is the article that you need to present. Every lab session is student presentation. On the occasions which Prof Leher teachers, it can be interesting though.. (which quickly becomes boring). By week 10, there were no more formal sessions in class, but consultations have to be made before we can go ahead with our research project. There is no exams, and the final report is due in week 13.
Overall: I highly discourage anyone from taking this module unless you really love kids, have kids ready to be in your participant pool, and you have a topic ready in mind related to kids
Why you should take this module: you want to learn about the development of language in children, or you just want to have a really slack lab module (and probably don’t learn much from it). I think the choice of your lab module is really important if you are planning to take HT in your fourth year, so don’t belittle your choice...
Don’t take this module if: you don’t wanna waste your time learning nothing.
Predicted grade: I don’t know man.. there is zero feedback from the prof for everything: no participation marks shown, no presentation marks shown, and we just submitted our research report in week 13... i sincerely hope I get either a B+/A- though!
UPDATE: A-! Cool :) I would love to get back my research report and read the comments though!
3. PL3232 Biological Psychology
I took this module in this semester just because I want to be taught under A/P Derbyshire, Stuart, because he is known to include philosophical concepts in his lectures. Already in his first lecture, he introduced concepts like subjectivity and objectivity... how could you not love him?! (sarcastically)
Having taken PH2241 Philosophy of Mind, I am really interested to see how a psychology prof will teach philosophy. I am impressed by A/P Derbyshire’s knowledge and interest in his field of study - foetal pain. Consciousness, pain, sentience, qualia... all these big terms are taught towards the last lectures in the semester, but throughout his lectures he always include some philosophy examples, such as Wittgenstein’s Beetle, Descartes’ Dualism, Kant’s philosophy, and Hume’s arguments.. I sincerely enjoyed his lectures and the discussion on how the subjective experience of what it is like can be produced from mere biological processes.
There was not much of a workload, like any other core modules in psychology. Typical 10% for tutorial, 30% for midterms, and a whopping 60% for finals!! I loved and hated how he would set a compulsory question (for both midterms and finals) and give the answer for us to memorize, so that we can learn to apply the same format of answering for the other questions in the exams. How witty. Therefore, everyone would get that 25 marks in their pocket, as long as we devote some time each day to memorize the answer he has given us. Easy huh?
His questions are not that difficult to spot anyway.. based on his past semester paper, it can be observed that he likes to ask questions on “describe” for short answers, and “describe and critique” for long answers. I accurately spotted two questions for finals - “How is schizophrenia diagnosed?” and “Describe the possible functions of sleep”, which me and my friends already did and practised writing out these answers. As for the long answers, I spotted the question “What is the ‘Hard’ problem”, something which I would love to write on, and his beloved topic of pain also came out. No surprises for the exams, just study the topics and themes that he specified =) For our finals, he specified 6 major themes: dualism, subjectivity and objectivity, somatic marker hypothesis, sensory perception, mental health, and neurodevelopment. Prof Stuart’s marking criteria are just to have depth, clarity, and logical.
Overall: it is quite enjoyable, although sometimes mind-wrecking because the philosophical part is difficult to swallow.
Why you should take this module: you are a psychology major and you need to clear your core modules. However, you have the choice of not taking this module under Prof Stuart if you don’t like philosophy.
You should not take this module if: you are not open to learning philosophy while learning psychology.
Predicted grade: A-, as long as I interpreted the essay questions correctly >_<
UPDATE: A! My first “A” in my whole university life >_<
4. PL3233 Cognitive Psychology
Prof Travellia is a very very funny professor who talks alot during her lecture. She can speak very fast and rush through her lecture if she has to. Prof T. likes to ask us “how are you feeling today?” and get us to do a thumbs up, thumbs sideways, or thumbs down to indicate our mood for the day.. and then she will talk about herself (mostly talking about her experience with her 3-year-old son), and give us some “fun facts of the day” regarding the topic that is going to be taught for that lecture. And then finally she starts her lecture proper... cute huh? =D
I have no complaints for Prof T, but the assessment is quite tricky for her module.. She loves to micro-manage (according to the TAs) because she marks our tutorial assignments! We have 3x tutorial assignments that amounts to 25% in total, a mid-terms that is 25%, and finals is 50%. Workload is slightly heavy, for the fact that you have to write a two-page essay at the start of tutorial 2 and 4 (tutorial 3 was e-learning, so she assigned us to do 2 questions from the textbook, and tutorial 5 we need to prepare a typeout as well, which is not graded, but still needs to be done) There is always something to do every tutorial session :)
Prof T. loves to test the most obscure stuffs from the textbook, so do read every experiment, know every psychologists mentioned, and know every theories and definitions. She likes to test “explain the relationship between ____ and ____” which came out during her midterms and finals. it could be the randomest of things, such as “spreading activation and lexical decision task” which you have to refer to specific experiments and models to explain this question well.
Overall: I enjoyed studying cognitive psychology :) it is much easier than I thought it would be! I studied for this module during week 13, didnt manage to touch it for reading week, and revised on the day before the finals... and could still leave the exam hall early.. should be fine for most people :)
Why you should take this module: Prof T is cute, and her questions during exams are manageable.
Do not take this module if: you do not like to read textbook or leave out minor stuffs in the textbook, because that is where she will test how comprehensive your reading is, hahaha. AND.. she likes to set assignments for every tutorial, so get ready for that!
Predicted grade: B+ (examinations are relatively easy, therefore bell curve is easily pushed rightwards, i guess)
UPDATE: Yea, a B+!
Ending words: and so.. that’s the end of my Year 2 (academically). time FLIES. I’m gonna write two more posts as a summary for my 2 years in CAPT, as well as the other things I do in university, because life in university is not all about the grades.. it’s also about making friends, having new experiences, and pushing yourself to the limits.
Cheers =)
Check out my other reviews:
AY2014/15 Semester Two (Part I) Review: SSU2001 College 3 Capstone Experience
AY2014/15 Semester One (Part II) Review: GEM2906, SSU2003, MNO3330
AY2013/14 Semester Two Review: PL3234, PL3236, PH1102E, PH2110, SE1101E, IEM1201T
AY2013/14 Semester One Review: PL1101E, PL2131, EL1101E, PH2111, GEM1906