ES8005 ENVIRONMENTAL EARTH SYSTEMS SCIENCE (3.0 AU)

If you love geography, taking it can be interesting.

Lessons were online for my time so I could easily just watch the lecture and fast forward them to my liking. Also, I personally felt that if you don’t want to listen to the lecture its fine too, I just read the lecture notes every week and if there are any parts I didnt get, I will just skip to that part in the lecture. Super time saver:)
Workload wise very manageable because there is nothing much to do.

Exams i felt felt easy but when the results came out not so easy anymore hahah. not everything in the exam is what you read I feel but definitely majority is already in the notes. Memorising them might be very tough because it is very content heavy so understanding it is better.

Personally got a B+ and I think it is sufficiently attainable as long as you read the lecture notes every week:)

Year Taken: AY 19/20, Sem 1

2 in-class exams – 20% each Individual
Final exam – 40% Individual
Class participation – 20% Individual
Lecture once a week

Took this to clear my GERPE-STS. If anything, this mod gave me the much-needed ‘fresh air’ from doing the lms core mods. It’s basically H2 geog (and i didn’t take it when I was doing A levels lmao) so everything was quite new to me. Lecture is only once per week but there’s almost on average about 100 slides to go through. The lecturer will give a 10-minute break after about an hour into class. Every 2 weeks or so the lecturer will open up a forum and we have to do a reflection on a short article in less than 300 words. This forms the class part marks. Exams are closed-book but in MCQ format. There are 60 questions for in-class exams and 100 questions for the final exam. If you are okay with memorising large volumes of content, then this is the mod for you.

I forgot to mention, there is also a mini quiz in almost every lecture which accounts for the class participation marks. The topics tested are usually taught during last week’s lecture. As such, every time you attend the lecture, it would be best if you brought along last week’s notes or revise the previous lecture beforehand.

This review was reposted with the kind permission of Pressing Realities. Originally published at https://pressingrealities.wordpress.com/2020/05/01/ay19-20-y1s1/

Year Taken: AY 17/18, Sem 1
Lecturer: Can’t recall, but he was French AND handsome
Assessments: 2 mid-terms (40%), final exam (60%)
Workload/difficulty: Height of Mt Everest/easy

This module was my first S/U. I knew it the moment I saw the final paper. It was geography – but ambitious and on crack. There was the Sun, earthquakes, rocks, clouds, global warming, volcanos, the oceans… and not enough time. The top grades were likely dominated by people with H2 geography credentials and/or who were taking the EESS major in the first place. Kinda like a non-psych student taking an introductory psych module against others who’ve already taken it in poly, not realising they’ll be stepped on thoroughly. I guess what goes around comes around…

To me this module is the equivalent of the other famous UE Astronomy, except it deals with Earth. Fascinating, but heavy in content, and requires a lot of memory space to ace. A background in/passion for geography will help. The syllabus appears to have been modified since AY17/18 to include an online discussion component (20%), but is still exam-heavy.

This review was reposted with the kind permission of Gwyneth. Originally published at https://gwynethtyt.com/2021/06/01/ntu-psych-mods/