CM8002 FORENSIC SCIENCE (3.0 AU)

Did during COVID sem, got A-.
lectures were fully online, no tutorials. Easy if you can memorise for the quizzes. However finals is very subjective. they will give u a story and ask u questions on what u think happened + give evidence + theory from lectures. very hit or miss if you didnt interpret as how the prof did. can pass, but if you want an A, need to memorise alot.

Year taken – AY22-23 S1
Grade: Unknown yet
Mid terms: CA1 + CA2 (20% each, both online) 45/50, class average 70.3%
Finals: 60%, physical exam (1hr), 1 question only

Course structure: From week 1 to recess week, course is completely online with LAMS being released every week. After recess week, there will be invited lecturers from various organisations to talk about their work, they are not recorded, so it is highly recommended to attend as CAs questions do include some details that the lecturers have talked about. For the entire semester, the discussion board is also open for students to ask questions, discuss about forensic science etc – these are subjected to bonus marks given by the prof if he thinks it is a good discussion.

Quiz structure:
CA1 – Online, after recess week, 25 questions. Everything the week before will be tested including lectures from invited guests. MCQ, with only 3 choices – Yes, No, Sometimes/Maybe
CA2 – Online, 2 weeks after the first, 25 questions. Multiple choices with sometimes up to 5 choices (including Yes, No, Sometimes/Maybe)
Finals – Physical, just 1 case study question. 1hr, honestly can be completed quite quickly. Prof requires just short answers which are logical.

Tips if you don’t want to S/U:
1. Do not snowball the LAMS, it is always good to keep up to date of the LAMS and then pop into the discussion board regularly to get some bonus marks

2. Do not overthink. Imagine this question “Bullets travel in a straight line”, you have 3 choices – Yes, No, Sometimes/Maybe. Honestly if you are in engineering like me, you might either pick No or Sometimes/Maybe. DO NOT OVERTHINK, the answer was ‘Yes’ and explanation given was that in the lecture notes, the prof always use straight lines to show the trajectory of the bullet. He was not trying to trick anyone, just DON’T OVERTHINK

3. Actively participate in the discussion board to gain bonus marks. Prof will indicate whether you did gain bonus marks, it is very obvious. I have found that there are some simple ways to gain bonus marks. ASK RELEVANT QUESTION from the LAMS – Some examples from my batch of discussion board “What distinguishes between the smell of dead human bodies versus dead animals, if there is any”, “How does TLC work?” This will let you achieve bonus marks just by asking question. ANSWER THE QUESTIONS ASKED, if you can’t think of any, then just reply students who asked questions. It is best to cite papers and sources into your answer, prof is from the chemistry department, dont BS him ah. Tada, more bonus marks.

4. Unless otherwise stated that you cannot – take pictures of ALL the slides from the guests lecturers. They are always rushing and their parts are short, but content filled = you do not have time to type out everything they say, i swear. I do notice that CAs do not have many guests lectures related questions, but taking photos and reviewing them for the general idea is a good way to make sure you can correctly answer the questions (this is TIPS IF YOU DONT WANT TO S/U, afterall)
5. For CAs, study the case studies and try to remember the victims/murderer/case names. You dont have to obsess over the details but if you have no idea which case the question is asking you, gg

6. For finals (hopefully i dont jinx it by typing it here) – Dont need to memorise the case studies anymore, just bring a logical head, with what you learnt from the lectures and you are gucci. The prof wants forensic science based answers, not your prejudice or overanalysing of the questions acting like you are in a CSI episode. Let me give you an example – “Mr. X is the murderer because he was an ex-boyfriend of the victim and hence they might have gotten into a fight and things went wrong” THIS IS BAD, NO MARKS “Mr. X is the murderer because there are fibres and fingerprint evidence that associates him with the victim, found on the paper bag” THIS IS LOGICAL, USE FORENSIC EVIDENCE, GOOD. Don’t bring in your bias when answering question, dont question the motive – use forensic evidence. Prof likes to include many red herrings so dont get tricked by them, sometimes they are really unrelated to the question. Prof will go through case studies during the last lecture, good to attend to sieve out what he wants to see in an answer.

Taken in: AY 18/19 Sem 1
Grade: A

Midterm (20%): 18/25
Finals (80%)

This is one of the most interesting modules almost everyone wants to take and luckily for CBC students, it is automatically assigned to us. The waiting list for this module can go up to 1000+ people I heard. The scheme of work is as such: 1 introductory lecture, about 9 online lectures every week and 5 guest lectures. The introductory lectures and guest lectures are those you need to physically be in the LT as guest lectures are not recorded. There are quizzes after each online lecture but they are not graded, the MCQ midterm questions will be of a similar style to the online lecture quizzes. To do well for this module, blindly memorising everything is not going to work (at least for me), the professor emphasizes the importance of understanding the concept and how forensic experts approach/solve cases. How I studied: Get a notebook and write down key pointers + case studies taught during each lecture (online & guest). Do this diligently every week, do not wait till before finals to start doing your notes, the content is too heavy and you are likely to not have time to finish making your notes. If you do this diligently every week, you already have your notes before finals and all that is left to do is read your notes and go back to the online lectures and doing PYPs.

No PYP for midterms will be made available so my advice is to really understand key concepts and pay attention to guest lectures, also make sure you know what points each case study shows. The MCQs will test on specific case studies, giving you the names of the victim/perpetrator and asking questions on them. The midterm is conducted in the LT, flashing each question for 40s and we answer on the OMR sheet. Then the questions will be flashed for the 2nd time for 30s to allow us to check our answers. The professor is quite funny in setting the midterm, the last question asked was: “What blood type of people are the most romantic? (P.S your lecturer is blood type O)”. The whole lecture theatre started laughing upon seeing that HAHAH 😂

Finals comprise of a 40-mark case study and 40 MCQs(each worth 1.5marks). The MCQs are of a similar style to the midterm. The case study will contain an extract giving you information on a case and witness accounts and evidence (includes pictures). You will then need to deduce who is the most probable murderer and support your answer with relevant evidence. Tip: read the extract very very carefully, it is slightly longer than one page so people tend to ignore certain information which is bad.

This review was reposted with the kind permission of Awesome NTU CBC Student. Originally published at https://awesomentucbcstudent.blogspot.com/2018/12/ay1819-y1s1-review.html

Taken pre-COVID
Very popular GERPE-STS, for those who didn’t realise this alr, quite hard to fight for during stars as juniors but you can try.
The assessments test a mix of forensic chemistry, physiology, history and some crime-solving/logical thinking skills. Lectures are all recorded except for the last few where they’re not (usually some guest speaker would be invited to talk about certain topics, and yes, what they say can test for MCQs). Midterms was basically having MCQs flashed one by one in sequence, shown twice (like blackboard MCQs with no backtracking, cos the Prof wants to save paper apparently, bs). Finals is another round of MCQs and a written portion where you have a crime scene and you have to answer some questions with your own deductions. This mod teach a variety of content and can be quite interesting but if you want an A+ you need to nail the MCQs, which can test concrete facts to very specific details of certain cases e.g. what is common among these 4 murder case studies, what weapon did this person use, which year did this technique get developed etc. so can be quite tough. The deduction qns is basically some common sense with a bit of bs; as long as the prof agree with your answer you get the marks.

Year Taken: AY 16/17, Sem 1
Grade: A+

Mid term(20%)- 12/25 (Mean:17/25)
Final (80%)

This course is automatically allocated to all CBC students, which is really lucky for us as I heard many people wanted to take this course but couldn’t get it. This course consists of weekly online lectures for 8 weeks and there would be guest lecturers coming after recess week. The guest lectures are not recorded so I feel that it is best if you attend all of them as they were very interesting and some of things mentioned may be tested in the final exam.

The mid term test(20%) consisted of 25 MCQs which tested on everything from the online lectures as well as the articles uploaded to the course folder. I kind of underestimated the test so I didn’t really study for it and got 12/25… Then I got worried and started mugging like mad for the final exam which was worth 80%. The exam had 40 MCQs and a case study worth 40 marks where we had to deduce who was the murderer. I think it was quite a fun exam. I studied for this course by writing down everything from the powerpoint slides in a notebook, then highlight and circle everything. ( A weird method but it worked!) It is essential that you read all articles with asterisks*.

Fun fact: This is the only course that is conducted in the Nanyang Auditorium, probably due to the huge class size (~1700 students)

Random ramblings for this course: The seats in NY audi are very comfortable~

This review was reposted with the kind permission of Hairdryer. Originally published at https://ionhairdryer.blogspot.com/2016/12/ay1617-ntu-cbc-y1s1.html