Rate Your Elective

ferdi

i was thinking...maybe we could compile info on different electives, give them all a standard grade (A - F) and comment and maybe that could be used by others in the future when trying to decide which electives to choose...

i'll start:

Elective: German Language II a

Instructor: Georg Grote

Requierments: You will need to have achieved an decent grade in Higher LC German.

Comments: straight forward easy to follow classes, not much homework, really nice easy going teacher.

Grade: A+

Pantsless

Celtic Civ - The British Celts

Weekly Tutorials . Bi Weekly Lectures

2 Essays
1 Exam

Alot of Tutorial work and the lectures are hard to follow. If you cut out the waffle there isnt that much to study for before the exam. The exam itself is fairly basic as they dont ask for in depth knowlege . Easily scrape a C with minimal attendence.

Grade C

Chakar

Introduction to EU Politics

Malin Stegmann McCallion (all years)

Its a pretty good elective but no homework and its 100% in the exam.Its pretty informative<snip - and not even three posts in! (See post below) - hulla>

Grade B

But otherwise shes a great lecturer.I think she does a great job.

hullaballoo

Hmm, this reminds me of some website that was recently removed by it's ISP, rateyoursomething...rateyourcat, no no...rateyour...ah fook it.

I really feel uneasy about these sorts of threads, so I'm only going to say this once:

Anything dodgy about any of the UCD staff will result in a ban for the individuals involved, and their posts will be nuked in their entirety.

Right, that's the business out of the way. Carry on.

Study Methods

Covers how to use the Library Resources for reasearch, bibliographies, theses etc.


Continuous Assesment ( based solely on attendance and completion of worksheets (done in class).

2 hours a week

Picked it cause it looked easy, and fit my timetable. Irrelevant to my course, just wanted five easy credits.

Might have problems for other people picking it, originally was supposed to be a mature student only course, but since they didn't tell us until week5, they had to let us do it. There were only 7 in the class, 3 undergrad, 4 mature students.

The_Minister

Critical Readings - English

2 Essays - 1 formative (30%), 1 big essay (70%)
No exam.

You must read Jane Eyre, To Kill a Mockingbird, Wide Sargasso Sea, Shakespeare's sonnets, and the sonnetts of Mary Wroth.

You only need about two of these to do the essay, so if you choose your essay early, you can skip the irrelevant lectures.

It wasn't too bad an elective, but you have to like to read alot. It is quite a time consuming course, but the essay means that there is no exam to study for.

gubbie

I'll do my ones from last year too:

Elective: Spanish (ab initio)
No pre-requirements
2 hours of lectures a week
Not much study and is a sinch of a language-easy to learn, easy to speak. Plus its one of the most spoken languages in the world.
Grade: B-

Elective: Chinese (ab initio)
No pre-requirements
2 hours of lectures a week
Class language tho its so hard to learn and speak, and the aural just sounds like "s... s... s..... s... s... c... s...??" But the chinese writing is really fun to learn and the origins of the words are really cool to find out too. Its got easy enough grammer-no conjugating verbs for one thing!!
Grade: B+

Elective: Robotics
Pre-requirements: Electronic and electrical engineering (the subject in the first semester of first year)
1 hour lecture and a 3 hour lab
ABSOLUTELY CLASS! It was so much fun-its all just a big project-you have to design a robot and programme it to go around a table collecting balls and theres a competition at the end of it. The labs are really laid back and theres no exam (only 2 reports-one 7 pages, the other 15-but again they're really easy). I also won €100 from it
... and I do believe that Red_Alert is down as one of the co-founders
Grade: A++ (extra points cos I got an A in it-plus it sounds so much cooler then all the other electives)

Steph_ucd

good thread... should be a popular one

NoNamer

gubbie wrote: »

I'll do my ones from last year too:

Elective: Chinese (ab initio)
No pre-requirements
2 hours of lectures a week
Class language tho its so hard to learn and speak, and the aural just sounds like "s... s... s..... s... s... c... s...??" But the chinese writing is really fun to learn and the origins of the words are really cool to find out too. Its got easy enough grammer-no conjugating verbs for one thing!!
Grade: B+

quick question, (if you dont mind saying) is that B+ a rating of the subject or your final result? trying to decide on an elective change, its down to japanese or chinese!

Dave!

Introduction to Cognitive Science (Stage 2)

Fred Cummins

2 one-hour lectures a week, Tuesday and Thursday.
Mid-term exam worth about 40%, and a final exam for the rest.

Basically the course covers topics from cognitive science and psychology including the likes of:
-perception
-thought/thinking
-memory
-emotion
-movement/locomotion

It's not hard to understand, really really really interesting, and Fred is a fantastic lecturer who makes the subject so appealing.

The course website is here
http://cogsci.ucd.ie/introtocogsci/

You can flick through the course notes there and see what you're in for.

It's not very intensive or difficult, and really if you're interested in the topics then you'll be looking forward to the lectures every week.

Highly recommended
A+

The_Minister

[Modhat]
Normally we don't allow thread bumping, but I think that this is ok. Just make sure you note when a post was made, and accept that things may have changed in the interim period.
[/Modhat]

Dave!

heh, didn't realise this is a year old

dhaddock

funny that the thread stopped last time after someone said it would be a popular one :pac:

seraphimvc

the more i think of the modularisation the more i want a very very very easy elective to take a break from the heavy core subjects....but it will f*cked your CV up if you did too much useless subjects:(

Drawing system of architechture,no exam ,just 5 super easy homework about design something/small essay on architechture(no technical terms needed) ,super relax class,the lecturer i had last year absent many time

if you are into arts/drawing/design,this is an A in your result.

Grade:
A+ ,superb elective for some people;
D ,probably an E result or bore the hell out of some people

rainbow kirby

Tbh I don't see the harm in doing things that you're interested in as your electives as a bit of a break from your main studies. Hence the reason why I did 3 semesters of... Japanese

No pre-reqs for level 1, level 1 required for level 2, and level 2 or Leaving Cert required for level 3. The classes are very enjoyable tbh, and the social evenings are fun too - especially with the Japanese cakes and sake!

Jev/N

seraphimvc wrote: »

the more i think of the modularisation the more i want a very very very easy elective to take a break from the heavy core subjects....but it will f*cked your CV up if you did too much useless subjects:(

Drawing system of architechture,no exam ,just 5 super easy homework about design something/small essay on architechture(no technical terms needed) ,super relax class,the lecturer i had last year absent many time

if you are into arts/drawing/design,this is an A in your result.

Grade:
A+ ,superb elective for some people;
D ,probably an E result or bore the hell out of some people

I wish I had known this in 1st year, out of 4 years we only had one elective!

singingstranger

I'm actually signed up for Japanese but having some second thoughts because my degree weighting is 100% final year and I can't risk not being good at it!

I would def recommend Web Multimedia (COMP 20030) as an elective - prob not being offered again until S1 of next year, but it's a core module for 2nd Comp Sci and not too challenging, and if you have any basic knowledge of HTML or have ever made a website before you've already covered a lot of the material. Practicals aren't too difficult (bar one on JavaScript) and despite spending most of the class learning how to code, you're allowed to use Dreamweaver etc to compile your end-of-semester website project. Would def recommend it, and a real A chance for anyone with a mild interest in it.

Dave!

I agree with Web Multimedia! I got an A+, easy peasy

I believe there is an Info Studies module that covers the same sh*t, Desktop Publishing or somethin like that

bnt

I took Applied Dynamics I (MEEN20030) as an elective this semester, since I'm doing Engineering and have a policy of trying to stay "in-programme". I don't think I can recommend this subject as an elective, to be honest. Mechanical Engineers need this, of course, but it's not for everyone.

I was interested in the subject, and still am, but the course description was a bit misleading. It's supposed to be Applied Dynamics, but the lecturer who did the bulk of the course (Kinematics and Kinetics) did a pretty good job of killing everyone's interest. He kept filling the blackboards with theoretical derivations of every single bloody formula in the course (not a few), and variations of those, and for no apparent reason than his ability to do so.

The best analogy I can come up with would be something like: a Creative Writing course where you spend most of your time learning how to build a typewriter or program a word processor - and only a little actual writing. There were no labs, so nothing to Apply there. The exam was better, more like the course description, and I think I did pretty well on it today, but preparing for it was more stressful than it needed to be.

rainbow kirby

singingstranger wrote: »

I would def recommend Web Multimedia (COMP 20030) as an elective - prob not being offered again until S1 of next year, but it's a core module for 2nd Comp Sci and not too challenging, and if you have any basic knowledge of HTML or have ever made a website before you've already covered a lot of the material. Practicals aren't too difficult (bar one on JavaScript) and despite spending most of the class learning how to code, you're allowed to use Dreamweaver etc to compile your end-of-semester website project. Would def recommend it, and a real A chance for anyone with a mild interest in it.

+1 - I loved Web Multimedia when I did it in 2nd year. If I remember correctly, it was a rather easy first at the time.

odhran666

Russian 1

Zarema ???

It was great! Once you have the alphabet down (which can actually be just learned off in like 20 minutes) it's easy.

Had a really good time learning russian and would definatly recommend it

Grade : A

(No + because classes were from 6 - 8 pm once a week which was annoying)

Raphael

Dave! wrote: »

I agree with Web Multimedia! I got an A+, easy peasy

I believe there is an Info Studies module that covers the same sh*t, Desktop Publishing or somethin like that

Web Publishing, covers XHTML and CSS.