According to LumiNUS > Task Report, there were a total of 1,070 (out of 1,081 enrolled students) submitted responses. These will get their 1% for participation. Actually, we were already at 95+% participation by the weekend so I was able to write most of the below, while waiting to fill in the final numbers. So here goes.

First, some demographic information:

Q1: I consider myself a…

• Student with a hybrid background pre-university. 225 (21.03%)
• Student with a mainly arts background pre-university. 215 (20.09%)
• Student with a mainly science background pre-university. 630 (58.88%)

In short, the majority of you self-identify as a science background. Conversely, only one fifth self-identify as having an arts background student. This is consistent with the previous semester as well.

Q2: I am pursuing or intending to pursue a major in…

• The Sciences (Life Sciences, Chemistry, Physics, Mathematics, Food Science & Tech, Pharm Science, Data Science, etc.). 539 (50.37%)
• The Social Sciences (Economics, Psychology, Political Science, Communications and New Media, Sociology, Social Work). 419 (39.16%)
• Multi- and Cross-disciplinary majors (Global Studies, Environmental Studies, Data Science and Economics, etc.). 48 (4.49%)
• The Humanities (Philosophy, History, Literature, Linguistics, Theater). 48 (4.49%)
• Asian Studies (Chinese Studies, Chinese Language, Malay Studies, South Asian Studies, Southeast Asian Studies, Japanese Studies). 16 (1.50%)

In short, the vast majority of you are science or social science students. If anyone is somehow still worried that the humanities (or throw in the Asian studies) students have any ‘unfair advantage’ (they don’t), just keep this sheer numerical fact in mind. Your ‘competition’ is mainly another science or social science student (not that it’s a good way to think of your classmates). And keep in mind that (from external data I know of), the majority of the social science students are in either Psychology or Economics–and neither are your stereotypical “lots of long-form essays to write” kind of majors. If anything, both are very mathematical.

Q3: Apart from my first major, I’m also considering a second major in (if you have more than one in mind, put the one you are most interested in):

Major (below), Intended Second (right)	Sciences	Social Sciences	Multi- and Cross-	Humanities	Asian Studies	Not considering
Sciences	223	80	32	19	10	166
Social Sciences	63	123	28	60	21	118
Multi- and Cross-	8	13	3	0	2	22
Humanities	2	22	0	11	4	8
Asian Studies	0	6	0	4	5	1

Ok, now on to questions to do with your starting subjective perceptions:

Q4: Rate your agreement with each statement.

• I am concerned about how I will perform in HSH1000.
• I think the content to be covered in HSH1000 will be interesting/engaging.
• I think the content to be covered in HSH1000 will be useful/applicable.

What to make of the above? Here, some comparisons with Semester 1 is instructive. Now, we didn’t do a Week 1 survey last semester (much to my regret). But the mid-sem survey (administered around Week 4-5, after all have completed their first tutorial) did ask for how people felt when they first entered the module. That’s not exactly the same as administering an actual Week 1 survey, but it will have to suffice for comparison. (We also didn’t ask about “useful/applicable” until Week 13.)

	Sem 1 Concerned	Sem 1 Interested	Sem 2 Concerned	Sem 2 Interested	Concerned Delta	Interested Delta
Sciences	4.21	3.48	4.34	3.78	0.13	0.30
Social Sciences	3.82	3.93	4.27	4.06	0.45	0.13
Multi- and Cross-	3.85	3.64	4.31	3.73	0.47	0.09
Humanities	3.23	4.21	4.17	4.15	0.93	-0.07
Asian Studies	4.12	4.00	4.25	4.13	0.13	0.13
Overall	4.01	3.67	4.30	3.91	0.30	0.24

Notice that your group came into the module with significant higher averages for both “concerned about performance” and “content interesting/engaging”, compared to last last semester, for students coming into the module. A lot of the increase for “concerned about performance” is due to a decrease in the disparity in subjective perceptions between the students in the different courses, very specifically, the numbers went up significantly for the Social Sciences, Multi-/Cross- and Humanities groups, much more so than the remaining Science and Asian Studies groups. In other words, the ‘arts’ students came into the module a lot less concerned about performance last semester (many of them discovered that the module wasn’t as easy for them as they thought, but that’s another story). And, that is no longer the case this semester–things are more even. A reverse story is playing out for “content interesting/engaging”–the others are roughly staying put, but the science students are coming in with a higher subjective perception score. Now, I don’t really know for sure why this change happened, but I think it seems a good thing overall.

Q5. Which of these components of the module are you most anxious about?

• Following the lecture-webinars
• Tutorials
• Group related work (discussion summaries)
• Final quiz
• Final essays

(Looks like I missed the in-semester quizzes; but “final quiz” serves as the proxy.) Showing a summary of the above in one chart:

	Reading on time	Following lectures	Tutorials	Group work	Final quiz	Final essays
Sciences	3.32	2.97	3.75	3.93	4.00	4.34
Social Sciences	3.20	2.71	3.49	3.73	4.01	4.19
Multi- and Cross-	3.40	2.71	3.65	3.63	3.77	4.04
Humanities	3.48	2.83	3.42	3.69	4.00	3.94
Asian Studies	2.69	2.38	2.88	3.25	3.69	3.69
Total	3.27	2.84	3.62	3.82	3.99	4.24

There’s no comparable data from the previous semester. Nonetheless, the outcomes are within expectations. In general, folks are (understandably) more anxious about the assessment, and after that group work and tutorials, than other things. Some students from last semester (early in the semester) worried about whether they can follow the lectures, but that seem to have become better over time. Your cohort is basically coming in somewhat more confident, which is good. Having one semester of NUS under your belt helps!

Q6.Any specific concerns you’d like to bring to our attention?

I was originally going to just post a breakdown of the common comments (most left the question blank), but maybe I should treat them more in the spirit of Q/A. Look out for a separate post on that.