NM1101E Review

Communications, New Media and Society

Taken in: AY2017/18 Semester 1
Expected Grade: B+
Actual Grade: A

Exposure module for CNM under the social sciences basket. This module covers very broadly about the foundations required for a communications major so I think this is one of the reasons why lectures are sometimes boring because the topics covered are just so broad in general that it is hard for it to be interesting. But, the prof does try his best to make the lecture interesting, some people think that it is a waste of time but I really liked how he shared about current affairs with us from the newspaper at the start of every lecture and linked it to what we were learning. It helped me to see the importance of what we were supposed to learn. However, I would say that lectures are still mostly mundane and that he did reuse some of his old slides.

As for tutorials, they were mostly used for group project discussions and a brief run of what was gone over in lecture. My tutor was this nice but sassy lady, as you would expect from most uni tutors, and I would say that I am glad that she was my tutor because she helped quite a lot in terms of feedback when it came to the group project. I did not really hear about stories about the other tutors but I did hear from my senior that when she took this module (under another prof), her tutor wasn’t very helpful towards the group project.

Regarding assignments, there was one mid-term, one group project and finals. It was MCQs and True/False questions for mid-terms and finals but questions were specific and from textbooks and readings assigned by the prof. It is super important that you know the contents of the textbooks and readings (even the assigned extra video clippings) well to score for the tests! (This is unique to Prof. Lonce’s style so take note if the module is taught by him)

For the group project, we had to come up with this campaign of sorts and kind of suggest solutions to a problem. The Prof was quite interested and invested in AI technology so he wanted our solutions to incorporate AI technology as well. There were three main components to the project (can’t really remember the exact weightage for each component): an interview to further understand about the problem and the target audience, a public relations plan and, a user interface and interactive design plan. These were done step by step and guided by the tutor during tutorials so if your group can keep to the timeline of the tutorials, it will be fine. My group was lagging behind a little, so I really panicked as a naive Year 1, but then again, I learnt that it is also totally okay to be lagging behind because through all projects, things always managed to get done even if it is really last-minute. But of course, if you’re the kind of person that can’t deal with the stress of nothing getting done, then do try your best to get your group started on it.

Overall, this was a pretty chill mod for me, aside from the stress that came from the group project. Another thing about this mod is that the weightages are quite spread out so if you screw up on something, you can still hope for something else to save your ass for the final grade. If you are looking for something easier to clear the social sciences basket, I would say do take this mod because if I hadn’t been an NM major, I would have seen this as the most approachable social science out of the rest.