Secret War Journal[8 January 2014]
Semester 1 has officially ended with the passing of 2014. I would say I did pretty well for SCE modules but I could had gotten better if not for the carelessness during Finals. Dang.
CZ0001 Engineers & Society
Lectures attended: 100%,
Tutorials attended: No tutorials. Tutorials are conducted during lecture
Textbook(s): N/A
Assessment: Finals, closed book (100%), suspected hidden class participation
Comment(s):
There is only one lecturer throughout the course. There are no tutorials though he will conduct a large scale tutorial during lectures weekly.
The lecturer himself is not bad. Sadly, the content was too dry. Many students found the content very boring and started to skip lectures. I do not blame them. This module is one of the modules that do not require much attention until the nearing the end of the semester. The reason being is that it is a very heavy content module with relative little thinking required. That said, it is an essay so you still need do some common sense. Otherwise, memorising the content a few days prior to the finals and you should be good to go.
CZ1002 Introduction to Computing System
Lectures attended: 100%,
Tutorials attended: 90%. I skipped the last tutorial. :O (Dr Graham Leedham)
Labs attended: 100%, attendance are taken.
Textbook(s): Computers Are Your Complete Future, 12/E, Catherine Laberta
Assessment: Clicker Quizzes x 4 (10%), Lab (30%), Finals, closed book (60%)
Comment(s):
With his signature eye-patch, it is hard to miss my tutor. He is quite an easy-going professor. I would say among the list of tutors available, he is not bad. You would learn more interesting things with him during tutorials. Those who are only interested in grades would be slightly disappointed but he will also cover the essential content so no loss there. It helped that he is one of lecturers and setters of the finals so feel assured that whatever he teaches are relevant. :)
Textbooks are not essential for this module. I did not buy the textbook for this module and I did not feel that I lost out in any way.
Clicker quizzes are relatively simple. It is a way of giving you free marks. Thus, be sure to be there for the clicker quizzes. They are held during lectures, you will be informed. Until they find a better way to prevent cheating, many students are just getting full marks for it.
Labs, please attend all of them. Each lab is graded. The tasks varies and may be not what you had learnt during the lectures. For example, during my semester, I was suddenly tasked to do assembly coding. Do not worry, it is just simple assembly coding so you should not have much trouble and it is not tested in the finals. Other tasks include simple research work on existing technology or hardware.
For Finals, I cannot guarantee that the lecture notes format would stay the same but I noticed that the color coding matters. Certain words colored in a certain color all turned out to be answers for the finals. Hope this helps. :)
CZ1003 Introduction to Computational Thinking
Lectures attended: 100%
Tutorials attended: 100%. (A Chinese Tutor)
Labs attended: 100%, attendance are taken.
Textbook(s): Learning Python
Assessment: Assignment x 2, Lab Quizzes, Finals, closed book
Comment(s):
Python knowledge beforehand would be extremely useful. This is especially so when it comes to assignments. Assignments ranges from simple to badly set. My second assignment requirement was very unclear. As a result, I have no idea how well I did for it.
Tutorials are pretty straight forward. Nothing much happens there except for discussion of different method in fulfilling the requirements of the tutorial questions. Pretty useful to gaining more insight on the different techniques you can apply from you had learnt in lectures.
Finals are similar to the quizzes in format, more questions asking on the expected output, possible compiling errors, etc. It is recommended to look through past years papers for insight.
CZ1004 Great Ideas in Computing
Lectures attended: 100%
Tutorials attended: 100% (Dr. Kevin Anthony Jones)
Labs attended: 100%, attendance are taken. Only 3 lab sessions
Textbook(s): N/A
Assessment: Team Project (50%), Quiz (30%), Peer Assessment (10%), Self Assessment (10%)
Comment(s):
I generally enjoyed the module. If you had read the module description, this is indeed a module that is taught very differently from how other SCE modules are taught. The content taught in this module are quite broad. Thus, studying the content could prove to be more taunting. My advice would be to understand the concepts more than memorising them. Having an interest in computing would quickly put ahead of other people. Here, passion and interest is trump.
My tutor was also one of the lecturers for this module. Attending his lessons, you would quickly realise that he is really passionate in this field too, hence the emphasis on interest and new technologies.
The bulk of the marks come from the team project, the quiz plays only a small part to it. Consistent effort into researching and development of the project would help to reduce your workload later on when other assignments from other modules kick in in full force. I would suggest being creative and aim to have your presentation generate interest as this module is suppose to allow students to have fun while learning.
Regarding the quiz, I must admit, given the breadth of this module, it can prove to be difficult to study. I myself faced some difficulty while revising for this. As long as you paid attention during the lectures, you should turn out fine. :)
MH1812 Discrete Mathematics
Lectures attended: 100%
Tutorials attended: 100% (Asoc Prof Frederique Elise Oggier)
Example Classes attended: 100%, similar to tutorials
Textbook(s): N/A
Assessment: Tests x 2 (50%), Finals (50%)
Comment(s):
Think Junior College/Secondary mathematics, just more difficult and faster pace. Junior College students will have an advantage here because much of the content taught here are similar to what was taught in junior college. Poly students would need to work extra hard for this module.
A graphic calculator is highly encouraged. It will help double-check your answers for matrix questions and complex number questions too. We would touching on matrix quite often in computing so the investment would be worthwhile.
For the tests, it might be changed but during my semester, as long as you revise for the tutorials and consistently do them, you should be fine.
Well, that would be all.
For a full list of the modules I took, see link
here. :)
