Was suppose to write this review about 1 year ago, yet 2018 had been such a busy year that I didn't even have the chance to post anything till now. Now for the Year 2 review...

P.S. It's been so long since I last updated my blog cause of life, but yay I'm back and ready to clear all my backlogs while I'm on internship so that I won't have so much to write about when school starts in August. I apologise for the short reviews since it's been so long since I took the mods. (Really should have done this earlier)

P.S.S I am finally completing this in May 2020...

Modules Taken:

BN2102 Bioengineering Data Analysis

Lecturer: Prof Alberto and Prof Martin

The module focuses mainly on stats and MatLab. So if you think that your JC/Poly stats is over, think again. When I took the module, we had finals and there were 2 MatLab take home assignments we had to submit. Cheat sheet was allowed in finals and it was mainly solving stats questions and using the right tests to prove your stats. This module was one of the more interesting modules in this semester since we were "learning something new" and the assignments were take home, so it was pretty easy to score. That being said, this made the bell curve super steep since everyone was sharing their code around and 1 small mistake can cause you to be in the bottom 25th percentile which will definitely affect your final grade. 

Prof Alberto was one of the best profs ever. His lectures were always very interesting and he made a point to made them engaging so that we wouldn't be sleeping in his class. There were lecture quizzes which were not graded and he had mini competitions throughout the weeks so things were more fun. Though I didn't really participate in all the problem solving, being able to attempt the questions at home was good practice for finals. 

Overall this module was alright as a whole and I enjoyed it despite all the programming woes. 

*Tips: Make sure you organise your cheat sheet well so that you won't be spending a lot of time trying to figure out which test o use to solve the problem. Either memorise when to use which test, or just make a point to write it on your cheat sheet so you won't be stunned there. 2 hours was barely enough for me to complete the paper cuz there were a lot of things to write for the questions when you solve them.

Grade: A- (Well, it's higher than I expected so I'm totally fine with this)

BN2204 Fundamentals of Biomechanics
Lecturer: Prof Raye Yeow, Prof Toh Siew Lok and Prof Ren Hong Liang

Module was taught by 3 different profs with 3 very different styles. Prof Toh tends to give us many practice questions to do before go through the answers in tutorial classes. Don't recall him providing answers for the solutions as he will solve the questions on the spot in class. For Prof Ren's part, it was mainly PC physics related stuff such as resolving of forces and mechanics. Mainly calculations. It was easy to understand and I would say it was the simplest, yet hardest part of the module. Lastly, for Prof Raye, his part was very routine. Standard protocols when approaching the questions, resolve the forces and you will get everything. 

For our finals was rather simple. Most of the questions that came out for finals were practically replicas of the tutorial questions. Especially for Prof Ren's parts, they looked too simple to be true, but they were. Most of my friends were questioning ourselves during the paper, only to realise that it was indeed as simple as they thought. 

At the end of the day, my only advice for this module is to make sure that you study the tutorials well and don't overthink. It is as simple as it looks.  

Grade: B (This was pretty much a disappointment since this was a pretty simple module with simple concepts. Well that's what you get for a bell curved grading scheme)

BN2401 Biosignals Processing
Lecturer: Prof James Kah and Prof Qiu An Qi

Biosignals, my enemy. I have a serious hatred for this module since after so long, I still can't figure out what was going on. For the first part, Prof Qiu's lectures were practically useless for me since I don't understand anything. Whereas for Prof James' part, his lectures were pretty easy to understand and the concepts were simple. CAs were doable and fine. But there was the horrible finals. Goodness finals.

For finals, Prof Qiu's questions were simple and literally copied from the tutorials. Meanwhile, for Prof James' his questions

Grade: B (Expected this since I didn't really understand Prof Qiu's part of the module and though I was confident in Prof James' part, bell curve...)

BN3301 Introduction to Biomaterials
Lecturer: Prof Musib, Prof Li Jun and Prof Zhang Yong

Didn't expect much from this module. I was planning on actually focusing in this aspect for BME however, after this module, I had a change of mind. 

The main teaching methods of the all 3 profs - reading slides. There weren't many additional stuff that was covered and honestly, I was quite disappointed with the module. 

There were lab reports and finals with the latter making up the majority of our grades. Finals were mainly regurgitation of lecture content and as much as the profs say that we don't have to memorize anything, NEVER BELIEVE THEM. 

Content wise, they covered the basics of biomaterials which includes their chemistry, synthesis, uses and their variations. It was a very content heavy module and not much of application. Tutorials were somewhat useful as the profs covered questions that were similar to those in the finals

Grade: B+ (It was practically regurgitation for Prof Musib's questions)

CS2107 Introduction to Information Security
Lecturer: Chang Ee Chien
Tutor: Hung Dang

I did this mod just to clear the requirements for my minor program (CS Info Sec) and I would say that it was a pretty bad mistake. It was my downfall for my grades. If you are not ready to 'fight' against all those CS students who were already planning to specialize in info sec, please do no take the risk, especially not if you are not exactly the best programmer out there. 

Made a pretty bad mistake when planning classes since I was almost always running to the lecture. Since I did not take this class with a friend, I was always missing out the front portion of the lecture and since the lecture was not webcasted, I was normally left to figure out the lectures myself. 

There were 3 practicals which were take home assignments that we had to work on. With the different tools that they taught in class, we had to do Capture-the-flag tasks to find codes for submission via IVLE. Didn't really do well for these since I was a total noob for this section. There was a short project that we had to do as a group on a given topic. Each group had to prepare slides and only send 1 person up to present so I am eternally thankful to that group member that covered our group for the presentation and secured that 10% for me. 

Finals was open-book and was honestly rather easy since most of the content could be found in the lecture notes. Immediately after the paper I knew I was going to do badly since the entire lecture hall was discussing about how easy the paper was...

Grade: C+ (Totally saw it coming, yet it hit hard)

ES2331 Communicating Engineering
Tutor: Yasmin Merchant

This was a compulsory module for engineers (back in our days... I think they changed this module already) to ensure that engineers could actually talk to people and express their ideas clearly. Never expected myself to enjoy this module so much (especially comparing with ES1531). 

There were a impromptu speaking sessions on random topics, something like toastmasters where the tutor will grade you on your speech and how you present yourself and 2 projects. The first project was with a group project where we had to interview someone in the industry and prepare a report on while the second one was an individual 'pitching' session where you had to present on an engineering product/idea. 

On hind sight, this was one of the most useful modules that allowed me to work on my pitching skills and helped a lot in my presentations in the following years. 

Grade: B+ (Slightly disappointed considering that I was getting 75th percentile for almost all the assignments and CAs)

*sighs* 
Yes ! I completed this module review after so long and I'm not too sure if it will still be relevant...

Cheers, 
Sam

Comment Box is loading comments...