Reflective Journal 5: Reflect on SES. You may want to consider the
curriculum, the learning process, the assessment, difficulties you faced, how
you overcame them, and how might SES be applicable in time to come.
One and half term have
passed since the start of SES and I have certain thoughts about this subject.
I find the topics discussed
in SES very interesting because they are important to me in the future as they
mostly concern about economic powerhouses such as China, America and Japan as
well as the country I am living in, Singapore. I learn about their history,
economy and their society. These, especially their corporate culture, are
particularly important as I would probably be going to one of these countries
to work in the future.
I like the learning process
very much, which is mainly based on your research because this me to learn to
be an independent learner. However, I dislike the quantity of the research we
have to do and the long time we have to spend doing it.
Every lesson in the class,
we would engage in a discussion with one student being assessed and getting the
ball rolling with his presentation. I like this mode of assessment as it allows
people to exchange knowledge with each other as well as clarifying their own
knowledge at the same time, a win-win situation. However, I dislike the fact
that the discussion is so rigid, we have to talk about a certain topic and only
a certain topic. We are not allowed to digress from the topic. (We even have a
red stick for it!) I feel that the purpose of SES is just like any other
subject, to educate us, why can’t we digress and learn new things from each
other, isn’t it a process of learning? When we are so focused about a certain
topic, I find it boring and become uninterested as I can’t talk what I want to.
I suggest that the discussion topic should not be fixed as only then it will
truly be a “free’ discussion. Furthermore, the classroom is very pressurizing,
marks are given based on class participation and many are competing to get it.
I don’t really see the point of a class discussion when people just talk to get
marks and not to truly help the person presenting on his term paper. This will
also be a disadvantage to the shyer ones as they will not speak up even though
they had done their research. Thus, I feel that we can engage in discussion
online at home while the student who is being assessed presents in school, as
many of the shy ones write/type more than they speak. Furthermore, it is easier
to look at the references one has referred to and also reduce the chances of
having miscommunication between everyone. I also feel that class participation
should only be counted as OP marks.
The other modes of
assessment, besides class participation, are the term paper and research paper.
I feel that the term paper is fine as it is because the one doing it can share
with the class what he is doing and also get help from classmates. However, I
do not think that the term paper is a good idea. Everyone is to select a topic
to work on and more than one person can work on a single topic. This results in
certain “easier” topics having a lot of people doing it and also everyone is
limited to the topic they can choose. I think that the research paper should be
about an area of research that we want to do and are interested in, not just
some fixed topics. This will allow more diversity in our papers and everyone
can learn a lot more from each other although there may not be alternate
perspectives to the topics and less collaboration.
I have
faced many problems in completing the weekly research for the SES lessons at
the start but these problems have mostly been solved when the questions were
spilt between us and each of us only has to work on one question and not all of
them. However, a new problem is that the 2 SES lessons in a week are on 2
consecutive days, instead of the 4 days gap in term 1, so we only have 1 day to
prepare for the next lesson, which sometimes may be a new tutorial and thus
there is a need to prepare more for. Another problem I faced would be the
readings, the readings are mostly very dry and boring, even though sometimes I
read through them, I do not understand and retain what I have just read.
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