Back with module reviews again! Have received an overwhelming response for level 3000 module reviews so I have decided to do a review for EC3322 Industrial Organisation I which I have taken in AY15/16 Sem 1.
Professor/ Lecturer: Dr Eric Fesselmeyer
Lecturer Rating: 4.5/5
Tutor: Hai Long
Tutor Rating: 3/5
Lectures:
Lectures were good. Prof Eric has been teaching this module for quite a period of time so he is very clear and is a master of the content covered. Content covered is very mathematical. However, a downside is that Prof Eric tends to skip alot of steps in his lecture slides which makes us really lost IF you do not read the slides and attempt the solve the sums beforehand.
Content covered is very interesting. First half of semester has lighter workload than 2nd half. So try to do well for midterms as paper was alot easier due to lesser content in first half of semester.
TIP: Read his slides both before and after the lecture. You'll have an advantage over other students.
Tutorials:
Attendance sometimes were self-marked (attendance sheet passed around the class) while other times marked by the tutor. Along with the attendance sheet would be the tutorial presentation sheet where you can tick next to which questions you want to present. However, this doesn't mean you'll 100% cfm get to present. If demand is high for that particular question, the tutor will just randomly pick one to present that question, which also means only that 1 person gets the tutorial participation points.
If you can do the tough question sets, then I would recommend you volunteer to present for those questions because certain questions are considered bonus and will give you double points.
Hai Long is Vietnamese so his accent was really strong and sometimes I could not understand him well as pronunciation of certain words was not clear. This wasn't too big a problem as he is very friendly and willing to help even after class hours. He tend to show us other examples and how certain questions can be tweaked and this means tutorials usually took the full hour, and we often had the next tutorial class chasing us out.
I had an occasion where Hai Long could not make it and Prof took my class instead. It was quite scary but a good experience having Prof as your tutor. Prof made sure that when you present, you knew how to get the answers. He would question every single step you took to derive the answer
Midterms:
Content was easier than finals as only first half of the syllabus was tested and content was easy to understand. I had several careless mistakes and ended up doing very badly for midterms which pulled down my final grade in the end. Bell curve for Midterms was pretty steep and I was at the end of the bell-curve (25th percentile bottom) which made it hard to pull up my final grade.
TIP: Try to score for Midterms, I had friends getting 80+/100.
Finals:
Cumulative finals meant alot more content was tested. As much as the content interest me a lot, it was quite a handful of content to revise for finals although I enjoyed reading the content. Slightly tougher content for 2nd half as a variety of questions can be tested.
Finals was challenging compared to midterms and I regretted not checking my paper thoroughly for midterms.
Overall:
I believed my finals pulled my grade up but my midterm performance was disappointing. I will recommend this module to all as content covered is interesting and pretty applicable to real life. If you're good in math, this would be an advantage too.
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Love,
Rachel
