Module Reviews: Y4S2

CFG1004: Financial Wellbeing - Art and Science of Investing

Assessment:
2x10%+20% Self-reflections
3x20% MCQ Quizzes

Overview
The module teaches you the basics of investing and what motivates one to do so. You learn about the investing horizons, the different types of investing, the pros of cons of doing each one of them, and how to achieve a balanced investing portfolio and lifestyle.

Module Difficulty
Very easy. Simply take some time off to complete the e-learning modules on your own time and that would be it. The self-reflection activity didn't take long either because they are rather simple reflections.

Personal Opinion
Just take it, the earlier the better (requires you to take CFG1003 as well which is also very light). Absolutely no harm doing so. In fact, you get to learn a thing or two about investing!

Expected grade: CS

CFG2100: Introduction to Decision-Making in Business

Lecturer: Ashok Charan (and the CFG team)

Assessment:
10% In-class Participation
40% Open-book MCQ Test
50% Group Project

Overview
The module teaches you how to run a business, make decisions, and observe how the market works over time. It started off with marketing introductions, financial management, moving on to advertising, team development and conflict management as well as business strategies, continued with business presentations, product development, negotiations, and many more related, finally ending with price and promotion.

Module Difficulty
As someone who is not an expertise in this particular field, the lecture contents were understandable in most aspects because they reflect the way things work in real life, but some required more time to digest because they were rather technical. That being said, it was still in the easy side of the difficulty spectrum.

The workload below is measured weekly.
Lectures - 3h
While the timetable says 3 hours of lecture, it usually took at most only a couple. They were mainly brought by Ashok as the main lecturer, while the remaining were covered by the CFG team. As you were to be assigned into groups in the project, the in-lecture groupwork, if any, will be done mainly within that same project team.

I could deal with the lecture contents, though some were easier to skim through yourself instead of listening to it due to the lecture pace.

The Project
The course mainly relies on the marketing analytics simulation website developed by Ashok himself (I think). This is where the group project went on for almost the entire semester, observing the changes in volume, price, profit, and many more metrics as each group makes a decision on any business transactions such as negotiating with other groups, adjusting the price of certain products, and many more. That being said, I personally had little to no idea of what I should've done in the website, so my group just ensured that any decision that we made was compatible and that would be it.

Near the end of the semester, each group will present their business review, how their business and products fare with the others, and what measures can be taken next. You will be given some past presentations as a benchmark or a sample run, so this part wasn't that worrying for me.

Personal Opinion
Is it an easy module? Probably not among the easiest ones. Is it light enough for you to go with the module flow? Certainly. I did learn a thing or two, though I probably could've taken away more tricks up the sleeve. What a way to end my journey in NUS with this module.

Expected grade: CS