..:: 641. The One With Yr 1 Sem 2 ::..

well, sem 2 was not as exciting cos besides business law and bs803 elective, the rest of the modules were quite a bore. financial management, accounting, IT and biz communications.

the only exciting event i remember in the sem was that i went to finland for 2 weeks during the e-learning and chinese new year weeks. had a conflict with one of the instructor for my biz comms. shall dig up some shit. i emailed her regarding scheduling my presentation as I will be flying back the day we are having lesson. Here's her reply:

John,
you are really messing up my schedule. As it is you owe me one presentation. I will allow you this request, but do realise that it inconveniences me, your classmates and the video editor and its downright rude to continually assume that you can change the schedule around at your convenience. You are certainly not building goodwill here.

Well i guess having a MC for my first presentation definitely worsen the situation. I thought she would flare in class but luckily she didnt. She also told me i caught her at her bad moment. It also taught me to be less direct in making this kind of request.

i loved my biz law tutor, ms joy khoo. she is a very patient lawyer who explained concepts clearly and challenged our reasoning for the cases. I believe it was one of the courses that i talked the most cos the way i approached the case was different from most of the people in class. when i did my tutorial, i tried not to go for the most obvious way to solve but read every line and interpret carefully.

the elective i took was also very fun. biology in popular media. i was the pioneer batch for the course and every lecture the prof would play snippets of a movie and use biology to explain whether the things they mentioned in the film are fact or fiction. the lecture was always full-house, can still see people standing at the back of the lecture theater just to watch the movie. Some of the movies i remember vividly were the fly; matrix reloaded; jurassic park; CSI; jewel of the palace (the korean show - da chang jin).

i found something interesting. comments by my fave tutor of all time... organizational behavior!!! My group, doraemon was "owning" in the class haha.

"The best group in my tutorials surpassed my expectations of 1st year OB students. Their transcriptions and notes were very detailed. They actually researched on the qualitative research methodology called “Grounded Theory”, and tried to apply some of its tenets e.g., iterative coding (where coding is done by several people and the same text is coded repeatedly with new emerging themes in later transcripts being used to refine or change the thematic coding of earlier transcripts). It is a long and tedious process but the quality of their coding gave me the confidence that the issues they identified were real ones. What they did was so unexpected that I seriously suspected that they didn’t actually do it. Hence I probed sharp and deep, but found no fault in their responses to me. They did do as they said.

In reading their entire report, one gets a sense that their assertions are well-grounded in real data. Having identified the issues, they analyzed them with OB concepts from the textbook as well as OB concepts from outside the textbook. However, I was most pleased by their recommendations. Their recommendations were practical and workable, and they found research findings and theory from the literature to support their practical solutions – an artful marriage of theory, research and practice.

Unfortunately, they went way past the word count and I gave them a 1-letter downgrade. It really is a pity but one must be fair to other groups. They dropped from A+ to A-. (my own comment: oops... but no prize for guessing which grp)



Some groups focused a great deal on research, neglecting to apply the theory to the case in practical ways. Other groups analyzed their cases almost as if they had not learnt OB, nor been taught to do self-directed learning – their recommendations were practical but not research supported. Some groups wrote better English than others, used fewer words to say things, and thus could say more in 4000 words.

None of you had major problems with applying concepts and theories from the textbook. This should stand you in good stead for the exams because you really aren’t expected to cite very much from theory elsewhere than the textbook.

To assess Theoretical Basis, I was looking for evidence of research supporting both your analysis and findings. You would have needed to do more self-directed learning. Language is very little weighted. I look only for understandability. If it is excellent however, you get bonus extras. Rigour of Data Analysis is weighted less than Theoretical Basis and Practicality.

The above feedback points are the most salient differentiating factors in the quality of the reports. I use other sub-dimensions for assessment that don’t demonstrate great differentiation."

mmm... sometimes it feels good to read and think back how far we have come since year 1. so happy we had a great start in year 1 and built such strong foundation, thanks to our class and the inspiring tutor.