NUS AY 14/15 Sem 2 Module Review

Modules taken for this semester:

EC3101: Microeconomic Analysis II

EC3102: Macroeconomic Analysis II

EC3332: Money & Banking I

GEK1527: Genes & Society

Two 2h lectures per week (webcasted); no tutorials

Assessment: 2x individual assignments, brochure

Closed book Finals (MCQ)

Lecturer: Professor Lam Siew Hong

I continued to take another biology-related module due to my interest and also to build on whatever I had learned from LSM1301 earlier. The lecturer was really good, he was very passionate, and did his best to explain the concepts so that everyone could understand. He is also very approachable and always willing to answer questions from students. There were definitely some overlaps between LSM1301 and GEK1527, but GEK1527 took a step further and covered slightly more depth. I found this module more interesting as topics related to society were covered such as genetically modified foods, cloned animals, the question of modifying genetics for future babies, as well as genetic testing. I also pondered about some of these topics before and it did help answer some of my questions.

There was a brochure assignment to hand up and also written assignments to do, which were rather manageable and weren’t very time-consuming. I found the assignments to be enriching and interesting, so I also learned a lot from completing them.

Finals was MCQ and closed book. It was challenging, as the MCQ options were all plausible. The options were something like (a) option 1 (b) option 1, 2 (c) option 1,2,3 (d) all of the above, so it made me doubt myself sometimes. I guess I can say that the bell curve for this module is steep, but I felt that the take aways from the module outweighed my results.

GEK 2506: Drugs & Society

Two 2h lectures per week (webcasted); no tutorials

Assessment: Self-recorded ppt presentation

Midterms (closed book; short answer questions). Finals (open book; MCQ).

Lecturers: Pastorin, Go Mei Lin

The lectures were split into two components. The first 6 weeks were taught by Pastorin, who covered drug abuse. The rest of the lectures were covered by Go Mei Lin, for topics such as the pharmaceutical industry, drug abuse in sports, history of selected medicines etc. The content for this module is more towards the heavy side, and can be quite dry for those who have little interest for the second part of lectures. I felt that there was too much content covered for the second part and the lecture material could be toned down to cover topics in more depth instead of breadth.

Midterms for the module requires quite a bit of memory work, and I don’t think the cohort did well for the midterms. Finals are MCQ (120 questions in 2 hours) but students are allowed to bring in double sided cheatsheet. I think some of the MCQ questions were pretty tricky, but luckily the cheatsheet I prepared was pretty handy for other questions. I think it is possible to score well for the module, you just need to pay lots of attention during lecture and have enough memory space.