IS1103 IS Innovations in Organisations and Society

Module: IS1103 IS Innovations in Organisations and Society

Semester taken: AY 2018/19 Semester 1

Lecturer: Dr Anand Ramchand (first half), Dr Yang Lu (second half)

Tutor: Mr Peng Xixian

Textbook: None

What it is about

This module mainly studies the ethical considerations in software development and the different moral values to consider when creating software.

Assessment components

• Individual assignment: 10%

• Individual weekly quizzes: 30%

• Individual tutorial submissions and lecture/tutorial surveys: 10%

• Individual tutorial attendance and participation: 25%

• Team tutorial presentation: 5%

• Team project: 20%

Comments

I apologise in advance to the teaching staff that put a lot of effort into this module, but this module certainly is a joke. While it is a break from the other content and project heavy modules, it is difficult to say what I have actually learnt from this module. Perhaps the most glaring thing that I can remember from this module is that as people writing software, we must write them in an ethical manner.

The module will also be revamped starting next semester, so some of the information in this review may become outdated, do use with caution.

Lecture

The lectures are held once a week, but the lectures are webcasted. By about the 3rd lecture or so, the number of people attending the lecture can easily fit into a tutorial room instead of being at Utown Auditorium 2. Lectures felt like it was a storytelling session and was rather difficult to cipher out which parts of the lectures would be important for quizzes or other assessment components.

After every lecture, there is a quiz to be done for that week. I had to rewatch the lecture again while looking at the quiz questions to pick out the answers from there.

Tutorial

The tutorial had little link with the lectures, as it was more on watching group presentations on various topics and a case study discussion for 2 hours every 2 weeks. However, tutorial participation took up quite a sizable chunk of the assessment criteria, which meant that the tutorial required significant contribution to the class discussion.

Project

The project involved writing an open letter regarding a chosen topic by the group and to publish that open letter on Blog.nus for the world to see.

I was blessed (or cursed) with extremely uncooperative team mates that claimed to have a lot of other modules to study for and hence were unable to contribute much to the open letter. It was only during the tutorial session that they actually opened the document that we are working on to see the progress that I have made for the letter. I decided to not mark them down for peer evaluation as it would be hard to justify that they did not do anything since they at least did something for the group presentation, but I have made a mental note to avoid USP students for group members.

Other information

Assignment workload: 1 tutorial every 2 weeks plus 1 quiz every week.

Project workload: Group presentation on an assigned topic and an open letter on a chosen topic.

Readings: None

Recommended if: A compulsory module for all computing students. For students that like modules with lots of debating involved, this is the module for you. If not, you are better off studying other more useful modules.

Rating: 2.0/5. Bad content, bad team mates. The only good thing was that it was light on workload which is helpful for someone that is overloading in this semester.

Expected grade: B

Actual grade: B+ (not too sure why, possibly due to the open letter since I did not do exceptionally well for the quizzes)