Module Review: EG2401A Engineering Professionalism

Introduction 
Another one of NUS Engineering famous “waste time” module. Honestly, I learned nothing from it, and if not for the coronavirus, I would have gone to Hanyang to get rid of it. 2 MCs is not worth the effort tbh. I was doing internship this semester and since it was offered as an evening module, I decided to just clear it. This module bare uncanny resemblance to ES2531, another useless module, where you are supposed to learn about ethical theories; real-life examples and write a group final paper to sum up your learning. You can choose your groupmates at will.

Lecture 
The format of this module is simple, weekly 1-hour tutorial and 2-hour lecture that neither my friends nor I bothered to attend. In fact, I think total student enrolment for this module is over 700, but you are lucky if lecture attendance is more than 2 or 3 dozen. The attendance is pathetic. Pro-tip: Don’t bother with lectures. Oh, if there's one complain, the lecturer seems to enjoy spamming so many emails daily to drum up hype for this module.  I am not sure, but maybe he is very excited about this module, but I just don't share his enthusiasm.  Sorry :(

Tutorial
The sad part is tutorials are kinda compulsory as 40% of the grades comes from participation. So, you will see desperate students trying to score cheap points by talking rubbish and sparring with other students in a lousy attempt to gain the instructor’s attention. Not helping is when the instructor himself starts talking rubbish as well causing lessons to be extended every week. There are four tutorial questions and for my instructor, he expects each group to attempt one question from each tutorial and present the answers in class. The issue is a lot of time is spent wasting time that at most two groups get to present their solutions.

Final project
For the final paper, you are supposed to pick one topic out of several given and write a paper about it. My group agreed to do it the most efficient way, by splitting one sub-topic for each of us, and gluing our parts together one day before submission date. I think the efficacy of our glue worked as the normally critical instructor did not say anything about our presentation. And with that, the module ended. Lol.

Conclusion
Yes, this module is very slack, but because it was conducted over Zoom, so presentation, whether for tutorial questions or the final paper, was just reading off my screen. And when others are speaking, I will drift off on to IG or FB. Your experience may differ as they are returning to physical lessons next semester. But since many of my seniors cleared it overseas, I would suggest it as well. Useless. 

My rating:
Difficulty: 1/5
Workload: 1/5
Teaching staff: 1/5
Overall: 1/5

Graded components:
Class participation: 40%
Group project: 60%

 

Expected grade: B+ 
Final grade: B+