Module Descriptions

Do you find the module descriptions provided by NUS/FASS misleading at times? Insufficient? We are submitting a proposal to the administration to allow students themselves to write the module descriptions, and the highest voted ones will be the official module descriptions for the respective modules.

To start things off, we tried our hand at writing a few of them on our own:

(Click on the downsized image to view the full image!)

What do you think? Will we be successful?

Mean, mode, median

Disclaimer: All mentioned characters and information are entirely fictitious and all events are based on the author's imagination. Any resemblance to living characters dead or alive is purely coincidental. I have no idea how to write a proper disclaimer so I hope this suffices.


This post was inspired by this news article. Do check it out before reading on.

- At an NUS Council meeting, with Head Dean and a number of Professors.

Head Dean: "The media has been complaining about some of our practices. Apparently those damn CNM students who love to write in to the papers have wrote in to complain! They said that we do not have enough transparency in the way we display module information!"

Professor Choa: "Sir, they always complain, we shouldn't listen to them."

Head Dean: "The media is hounding our backs! We have to! Professor Lee, your module Sing and Tell (SNT1688) is in question. Other modules that they have complained about are Hub of the Stars (AS1633) and Armed Ones (SD1627)"

Professor Nail: "What are they complaining about? What is wrong with my Hub of the Stars module? It is an excellent contribution to the Astrology Department!"

Head Dean: "They say that you only reveal the top marks of the module, which is misleading and not reflective of the entire cohort! Students need more information to know how difficult the module is. For example, you could reveal the average scores of each cohort!"

Professor Koi: "But Sir, it is impossible to define an average score! The scores of the students vary from semester to semester, depending on whether we put our lectures at 8AM or not, whether the lecturers are good or not - there are just too many factors!"

Head Dean: "However, the students need to know the truth in order to make an informed choice. If there are so many variables affecting the average score, please let the students know. Otherwise, they will say that what we are doing is tantamount to 'public deceit'!
We should also release the mode, the most common score obtained, as well as the median, which is the central mark of all the marks. If you are unclear about how to do this, go consult Prof Cheung, he is in charge of PL2131, a basic statistics module for Psychology."

Professor Nail: "With all due respect sir, this is still ridiculous. I don't see what the difference is. When we release the top mark, the students are upset when they get a mark below it and say that it is misleading. But if we release the average mark, and students get a mark below it, we can just say that they are below average? What difference does it make?"

Head Dean: "Nail, it is because average marks is what students are really getting. The top mark is what normal people may never get - it's a theoretical maximum. It is what only the muggertoads ahtiongs Dean-Listers will get.
Additionally, we should consider releasing the 'Minimum Guaranteed Mark', or whatever grade you are marking as the lowest end of your bell curve. This way, students know the 'worst case scenario', or how badly that module may pull their CAP down.
I think this will be a smart move by us, and will make ensure students don't get 'conned' by our professors into bidding for modules that they don't really want."

Professor Choa: "Yes sir, that certainly does sound brilliant. I will have a meeting with my Sing and Tell department to roll out new module descriptions with the additional information displayed. We may also have bundle deals such as allowing students to bid for two modules concurrently!"

Head Dean: "That's great. Remember, at the end of the day, we want to be fair to everyone."

~~~~
P.S. The numbers, module names, and prof names used were NOT random. If you still can't figure out what they were derived from, drop me a message :)

How did you like the blog entry? Leave your comments down below, or in the tagboard at the side. Alternatively, you can drop us a mail at realFASS@gmail.com 
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This may end up being a monthly thing, (yes, we will only blog in certain periods.) We wanted fornightly but we're not sure if we have enough material to sustain it. If you have any ideas about what you want us to blog about, feel free to drop us an email. Thanks for reading!

Regarding updates

Dear readers,

It has come to our attention that there are people who are returning to our blog for some reason (With the counters rising) even though there are no new blog entries. This could be because you are just checking for updates - which we're afraid only comes about once every fortnight. (That's just an estimate, may be less or more frequent)

To save you the trouble of randomly checking for updates, we have two ways to keep you updated:

The best way to know when there IS a new entry is to follow us on our Twitter feed, the link and feed is on the right -->
Alternatively, you could drop us an email at realFASS@gmail.com telling us you want to subscribe to our blog and we'll actually send you an email everytime we make a new post. This is something we will gladly do because we treasure each and every one of you reading our posts!

If someone knows of some form of in-built subscribe feature that Blogger has and we haven't found, please to let us know, and we'll include that feature in our blog.

Once again, thank you all for your support, and happy holidays!

Love,
realFASS

21.12.10

The Mayans predicted that the world would end on 21st December. NUS students couldn't agree more. 21st December was the date which NUS was scheduled to release the Semester 1 AY2010/2011 results. Those who had subscribed to an SMS service would receive an SMS that told them their grades as well as their CAP for that semester. Those who didn't had to wait till later in the afternoon to check the NUS website.

Here at FASS, being the faculty that cares, we tried to appeal to Administration to include a 'Merry Christmas' in the SMS, but it was turned down. In the end, they stuck to their format of 'A/U xx123 , grades, CAP: xx'

By 7AM, all systems were ready. The super phone that would send out SMSes to all NUS students was being charged and warmed up.

Super NUS phone that can transform into a killer robot as well.

Our Welfare Advisor Mr Wee Kare was busy phoning Counselling and Psychological Services, making sure everything was in place. Last semester their phone lines crashed because they didn't anticipate the large volume of suicidal/depressed students that would call in.

And the SMSes went out. One by one, all across Singapore, NUS students are rudely awaken by the best (or the worst?) alarm clock this year, the pushSMS delivering the results

Talk about an explosive wake-up call!

Twitter began flooding with whines and complains and joyous celebrations and moans and one-liners and grumbles. Our Twitter team had unleashed a viral hashtag that was retweeted countlessly to try to keep everyone's mood up. Some of our favourites:

" #howwehandlebadresults History students think back and wonder what went wrong in the past

#howwehandlebadresults Philosophy students ask if they didn't get good results, are they 'bad results'? And what is the real meaning of 'bad'?

#howwehandlebadresults Sociology students are in a continual struggle with those with high CAPs but can never resolve it. #conflicttheory (you need to actually take soci to understand this one) "

In the office, we found out that only about 60% of students subscribed to the SMS service. This baffled us. Why would anyone want to know your results a couple of hours later than you can? Doesn't it just prolong your agony? 

Mr X's bell curve

Mr X, a very devious professor (who DID use this bellcurve which our Twitter team drew for his module)  said: "Why are these fools waiting till the afternoon to get their results? Let's prolong their agony by shutting down our servers and pretend it's some technical glitch!"

And because he was a senior member of the staff, everyone listened to him and ISIS did go down for a period of time. We forget what it stands for... It Sucks It Sucks? -shrugs-. That must have been what NUS students were lamenting anyway, when they couldn't access their results.

The servers did go up eventually, and everyone did get their results. Counselling Services report another jam in their phonelines, with countless people calling in. One caller wanted to 'burn up all her textbooks and jump into the fire'. Another threatened to 'hold their breath till he burst'. There was even someone who said she would 'jump onto Bus A1 from the rear and let it drag her around campus!'

Head Dean caught whiff of this and called US up, at realFASS. 

"This is unacceptable, the morale is far too low. You guys need to churn out some high quality tweets to keep their mood up!"

We said: "But we only have 50+ followers! There are so many students out there, what difference will we make?"

Head Dean: "Sigh... I can see why they hired you for this Twitter job and not in the CNM department. It's the power of mass media! You make good tweets, people will retweet them, and your popularity will spread! "

Psst, have you heard of @realFASS?

So we worked hard and long to churn out tweet after tweet. Our numbers steadily climbed (clumb? clamb? nah, climbed seems right) and sits at a modest 100 now. Our Twitter head was quite contented, given we only created the account a week ago.. 100 followers in 1 week seems pretty decent!
However, one of the members in our creative team suddenly perked up:

'100 isn't good enough! We are still behind some other fake twitter accounts that have been inactive for a month, and even then, their tweets are not as funny as ours!'

"Now now, don't be too pompous, it's up to people to think what is funny and what is not. Give it time! If we keep producing good quality tweets, people WILL follow eventually."

'-grumbles grumbles-. I think we need to ask them to actually recommend us to their friends! Following our account directly supports us as it helps us hit our monthly quota! Big Boss said he will fire us if we don't hit the quota!! I can't lose this job! I can't go back to tweeting under @coolboiz8181 !!'

"Calm down, young one. We shan't be so pushy and demanding, we want people to be attracted to us, not us going out to grab them. This is also why you are still single, you are too desperate. Just be yourself, be nice, and what's yours will come to you"

'Yes relationshipguru boss. -_-' -sulks.

~~~


How did you like the blog entry? Leave your comments down below, or in the tagboard at the side. Alternatively, you can drop us a mail at realFASS@gmail.com 
We will post on our twitter feed whenever a new blog entry comes up, so follow us @realFASS !
We're thinking this will be a fortnightly thing, (we wanted weekly but we're not sure if we have enough material to sustain it) and if you have any ideas about what you want us to blog about, feel free to drop us an email. Thanks for reading!


love, 
realFASS team