Faculty of Law
Legal Analysis, Research and Writing Programme

During the first semester of AY2002/03, the Law Faculty launched a comprehensive Legal Analysis, Research and Writing programme, Asia’s first. The programme is designed to systematically equip law students with analytical, research, writing and communication skills that will help them excel in the competitive international market for legal services. The programme’s core courses will be taught over two years as compulsory modules in Years One and Two, using hands-on practice and realistic scenario-based learning as principal teaching methodologies.

Students will learn by doing, and will be expected to ‘do’ regularly. To implement this pedagogy, the course breaks with tradition. Instead of the usual lecture-tutorial teaching model, virtually all teaching takes place in small tutorial-sized groups (12 to 13 students) that increases in-class participation and optimises opportunities for one-on-one feedback. Written assignments receive comprehensive critiques on analysis, organisation and style. Rewrites to implement such comments are required. The legal writing faculty, principally staffed by adjuncts with strong practice credentials, employ a ‘law practice’ model to simulate the demands and expectations of law practice within the classroom. While it remains to be seen whether the programme will train a better-skilled breed of Singapore lawyer, one tangible difference has already been observed: First Year law students this year seem to be spending a lot more time writing and researching in the Law School’s newly renovated library!

Faculty of Medicine
Professional Development and Communication Programme

The Professional Development and Communication Programme aims to develop the professional skills and personal competencies of medical students in the area of interaction and communication with patients and their family members, peers and members of the health care team. At the end of the module, students will learn to be more compassionate and be able to work effectively in interdisciplinary teams to provide humane and professional care to patients. The course will be taught from Year 1 to Year 4 by an integrated team comprising clinical staff from the Faculty of Medicine and academic staff from the Human Resource Management Unit. Course topics include: (a) self-awareness and self-assessment; (b) empathy, rapport building and listening skills; (c) team work and conflict management; and (d) professionalism and coping skills. In addition to lectures, the course will be taught through active participatory learning methods such as practical exercises, case studies, self-assessment and simulation exercises.

NUS Business School
Getting the Best Out of 1-hour Tutorials

The first-year course, Legal Environment of Business (BH1004/GEM1004), imparts basic business legal knowledge to students via the lecture-tutorial mode. While the lecturer explains basic concepts during lectures, the weekly 1-hour tutorials guide students in the applications of these principles to 7–15 short hypothetical questions set in advance by the lecturer. For students to gain the most from each weekly tutorial, the course instructor, Ms Lan Luh Luh, created and uses a special website on the Integrated Virtual Learning Environment. Students are divided into groups of 4–5 at their first tutorial. Each group is responsible for preparing written responses to 1–2 tutorial questions and uploading these answers onto the IVLE Workbin according to their respective tutorial class one day before each tutorial to facilitate downloading by their tutorial mates. Students come to the class to comment critically on and improve upon their work and create their own set of ‘Grade A model answers’, instead of merely providing basic answers. 5–7 minutes are spent reviewing each question, thereby adding to the students’ subject knowledge, guiding them to think critically and preparing them for an open-book examination where generally more than textbook answers are required to score well. This approach encourages students to share their knowledge and claim common ownership of their work. Students are frequently reminded that the quality of their ‘model answers’ depends on how much they have put in before and during the tutorial discussions. Thus there is no fear that students might just download the answers and refuse to turn up for tutorials, as they know that it is only through the tutorials that they learn how to improve and refine their answers. Consequently, students are constantly challenged to create ‘perfect’ responses that would constitute ‘Grade A’ answers in the eyes of their tutor and peers, often resulting in a satisfying experience for both tutor and students.

School of Computing
“Is My Proof Correct?”

The yearly course on discrete structures (CS1231) conducted by the School of Computing attempts to lay a strong foundation in logic and proofs before proceeding to apply these in mathematical structures. Our thought processes can be reduced to several logical inference rules, of which Gerhard Gentzen (1935) formalised it with a goal of coming ‘as close as possible to actual reasoning’. We implemented this deduction system for propositional calculus as a java applet and deployed the applet over the Web via http://www.comp.nus.edu.sg/~cs1231/pc.html. A proof can be keyed in interactively and the proof-checker will highlight the correctness of each step. This automated checking frees our teaching staff from the repetitious task of checking students’ proofs. We intend to extend the proof checker to predicate calculus, and then to add an ad-hoc natural language translation system, so as to reach the final goal of checking math proofs worded in English.

School of Design & Environment
‘Transfer of Learning’ Seminar

As part of its regular series of semestral Teaching Seminars, a lunchtime dialogue session was organised for staff members of the Departments of Building and Real Estate with Prof Alex Ip, Associate Director at CDTL. Prof Ip commenced his presentation by comparing the significantly different teaching/learning environments he had experienced while he was a Teaching Assistant at Rice University (USA) and his early days at NUS. Initially, the teaching methods that had worked so well for him in the US simply did not seem to yield positive results here at NUS. This triggered him to start on a journey of self-discovery, understanding the implications and benefits of an ‘active’ process of learning (e.g. the adoption of methods which would engage the learner’s cognitive processes) and enabling students to transfer their learning to new situations, thereby instilling a love for learning in students. After Prof Ip’s vivid recounting of the obstacles and triumphs of his journey of discovery, a lively and engaging Question and Answer session followed.

University Scholars Programme
Students Take Charge of Their Own Learning and Development

The University Scholars Programme’s Global Programme aims to bridge the gap between academic learning and the wider world of responsibility and performance. Through active participation in a variety of activities outside the academic curriculum, the Global Programme encourages the development of leadership qualities and well-rounded personalities with a broadened outlook. In addition to activities coordinated by the faculty, students propose and organise activities on their own initiative. This semester, students from the University Scholars Club organised the University Students Symposium on Environmental Issues on 3 August 2002, with the objectives of enhancing students’ awareness of environmental issues and commitment to protecting and conserving the environment. The symposium brought together leading academics and environmental industry professionals, and was attended by students from Singapore’s schools, junior colleges, polytechnics, and universities. Students are also planning a community service project to Vietnam in December 2002 (Venture Vietnam) in conjunction with the Singapore International Foundation. Their purpose is to build a village kindergarten and to develop a website to document the cultural practices, folklore, and the arts of the ethnic community with which they will be working.