[School] NUS Module Review AY16/17 Sem 1: SPH3104 Infectious Disease Epidemiology and Public Health

Dear readers,

I realised searching for module reviews on Public health modules are as rare as catching a rare Pokemon. Decided to do a review for SPH3104 as I would like to advise which group of students to take and module and which group of students to not take it.

Grading criteria
- Individual Assignment (30%)
Individual essay assignment, max 1500 words (given in week 2, due in week 3)

You will be given a topic to write an essay about, asking you to describe the problems, causes and some possible solutions to solve that problem related to Public Health. There are 4 different topics, whereby the class will be split into 4; those with the same topic will form a group to work on the group project which determines majority of your grade (besides the final exam)

My topic was barriers to the uptake of vaccination (both influenza and pneumococcal vaccines) in elderly. Pretty simple and straightforward, but make sure if you get references from other countries, justify how is it applicable to Singapore (some similarities and characteristics between SG and the countries)

- Group assignment (40%)
30%: Presentation (15minutes + 5 minutes Q&A by panel of judges)
10%: Peer assessment (basically to make sure you're not the slacker of the team)

SUPER DUPER TIME CONSUMING cos we had to coordinate with a doctor from the CDC and get him to understand what we wanted to do for our project, and it took awhile for him to help us liaise with potential CCs to interview their elderly for our project. Had several meetings with him to discuss and craft out our survey questions, and had to go down to several places to conduct 1 to 1 surveys with the elderly (plus communication problems wasn't of much help also). But for 40% of your total grade, it was ok? and was a pretty good experience which can value-add if you intend to go into the research route (whether in the public health field or not)


- Final exam (30%)
30 MCQs and 3 SAQs
I wasn't expecting such a tough paper as they tested content that they did not pay much attention on. The profs were telling us that they were testing on concepts rather than those medical terms, etc. But WHAT ON EARTH, the minute details of the infectious diseases were tested. And since I wasn't a life science student, I was at a huge disadvantage.

One of the questions required us to list down 4-5 antibiotic resistant bacteria, of which I could only recall Staphylococcus aureus. My groupmates were telling me after the paper that they didn't expect such questions but wrote down according to their life science knowledge. (I guess being a life science student gave my classmates an advantage over people like me lol)

I guess the prof was pretty sly, cos the MCQs had options where answers were very similar which made it hard to eliminate.

Overall comments:
Quite chill for a level 3k mod for lectures (50% of the class doesn't turn up for classes) but group project was time-consuming. Pray you have good group members that are proactive, and pray that the group members and yourself have similar timetables  (or else peer review scores will affect your overall grades- try to be present during meetings/ do all the saikang)

Final exams was horrible, was worried I would fail the module, but I guess if you're to take the mod, just study all the small details (some of which are not found in the lecture notes but were mentioned by the lecturers)

You have to remember which diseases are vector-borne diseases, which are zoonotic diseases. Not an easy feat for non-life science students unless you have taken biology in JC before.

Should you take this module?
Life science students- Yes
Non-life science students- Maybe
Depends on whether you have interest in biology/ enjoy memorizing medical terms/ names of bacteria

[School] NUS Module Review AY16/17 Sem 1: EC4394 Behavioural Economics

Hey friends,

Back with some module review (will start with those mods which I had trouble looking for reviews online, if necessary, I'll continue with the more popular mods reviews.

EC4394
Lecturer: Roy Chen
Style of lessons: 3-hour seminar once weekly, a short 5-10 minutes break in between
2 slots available for bidding
No tutorials (each seminar class is about 40 people)

Grading:
Majority on group work
- Group Project (30%)
Where you have to come up with a topic (for Roy's approval) and then you have to produce a written report to explain how your group is going to conduct the experiment (but you don't have to actually conduct the experiment)
- Group Presentation
Each group is assigned one week where you have a set of research paper to read and present its findings on (basically just a normal presentation)
- No Midterms
- Class participation (10% if I remembered correctly)
- Finals (40%)
Very simple, if you have practiced and have listened in class.

Personal views on module:
- Content wise: very manageable
- Little math involved. Basic math only (subbing in of values)
- Interesting content which allows you to understand why people make different decisions.
- Roy Chen was an amazing prof
- All the marks for various components (group assignments and presentations) amongst all groups were pretty close. Meaning determining factor on whether you get an A depends on your finals
- Finals was easy (tested the concepts rather than all the minute details)
- Roy Chen made the class more interactive by using Moblab (an online application to play payoff games aka dictator games with other classmates). PLUS, if you're chosen as the lucky pair, you get the payoff you get in the game. (Some people won $12- just by attending class;good money in my opinion)

Do leave a comment if you have further queries.

Cheers,
Rachel

[School] NUS Module Review AY15/16 Sem 1: EC3322 Industrial Organisation I

Hey Readers!

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. 

If there are any queries, pls feel free to comment below and subscribe to be updated for more module reviews. 

Love,

Rachel