Showing posts with label ES2331. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ES2331. Show all posts

Monday 11 May 2015

ES2331 - Communicating Engineering

Type: Core Module
Difficulty: Easy
Workload: Normal
Continuous Assessment: Class Participation, CEP1, CEP2 and Reflection Project

This is a module where it focuses on presentations and panel discussions. One has to be pretty good up on stage to ace this module. I personally am not the kind who is comfortable with speaking on stage, hence I wasn't very pleased with this module in the beginning.

CEP1 was broken into 2 parts. First, we had to find an engineer (yes a real one) and interview him/her. Finding engineers can be quite hard if you do not have contacts. And you had to submit a voice recording and transcript of the actual interview so you cannot fake the interview. Second, with the knowledge gained through the interview and your own research, you'll be placed in a panel discussion with random classmates and a random topic which would be made known 10 minutes before the panel discussion. This is pretty tricky as in a panel discussion, you had to be impromptu. It is as if you're having a conversation with the other panelists.

* A Hint: Should you forget who to quote, even if its just your opinion, you may simply just say "My engineer mentioned XXXX in the interview previously"

CEP2 was a presentation. You had to present a product which has a certain technical component in it, in which only engineers can give that presentation (and not just by any business sales marketing department). Cue cards are frowned upon, and there is a hefty weightage in the style of delivery of this presentation. Hence a lot of practice is a must. My product happened to have a TED Talk related to it, so I ripped some pointers and ideas from them. Powerpoint styles are preferbly TED talk standards - Full Screen images per slide. You do the talking, slides should not have more than 7 words. I practised a lot a lot for this as I'm not a natural speaker. And I guess I pulled this off quite well due to my tutor's favorable comments afterwhich.

* A Hint: Find  a TED talk related to your product. It can give you ideas and hints on how to design and deliver your presentation.

Expected Grade: A-
Achieved Grade: B+

Module review for my Year 1 Semester 2 modules

Year 1 Semester 2

It's the end of my 1st year in NUS, and I must admit that it wasn't an easy journey (because my brain was a little rusty from my 2 year break from studying while serving NS). I realised the importance of module reviews are to freshies (having been scouring through them myself when bidding for modules). Thus I've decided to create this blog, for you!

I'll try as best to give an in-depth review, as well as throw in everything I think you'll need at hand to aid you in scoring for the module. After all, we're on different bell-curves *sniggers