APPENDIX: Students’ Reflections

Student Reflection 1

“The 13 weeks of lecture has presented the idea of sustainable building engineering as a practice of designing buildings that uses material and energy efficiencies to minimize the environmental impact while cutting costs and improving bottom line. It has been an eye opener for me Prof Moshood’s teaching methods are ones I have never experience before and I am grateful for being exposed to. The lectures covered a wide range involving SBE from climate change to building performance to water services, energy consumption and indoor air quality.

I especially enjoyed learning about prescriptive-based approach and performance-based approach as it opened up my mindset towards the process of building delivery. My previous mindset was just like prescriptive-based, where it is like a recipe, just do this, then this then do this. And so long as we followed the procedure, we will accept whatever results it is because it is the outcome of the recipe. We will not question what went wrong/ what is important during the process. Like how in the building industry, many projects just follow what is written so they can follow compliance with the safety and performance standard.

After being exposed to performance-based approach, I realised that it is not just about following the recipe. A prescriptive specification will tell the contractor how to do the work but performance will tell them the requirement and it is up to the designer how they want to do the work to meet the performance objective. Not only that, I have learnt a lot from the case studies while going through the tutorial lesson. Various case studies I have researched such as the fixed plan HDB and open plan HDB which provided flexibility for end consumer and the precast and prefabricated components for construction can clearly show me the benefits of utilising performance-based approach rather than prescriptive.

The tutorial lessons have also helped me with my presentation skills, with the feedbacks given by Prof Moshood, I feel that after every presentation, the team can better organise the way we deliver our intentions to the audience which have helped us greatly during the final presentation for the project. However, I believe that there are always room for improvement as one does not stop learning even at an old age.

The story writing report was really a first for me as it is the first time, I have written a non-friction story that was supposedly a report. It was hard to organise information and present it in a way for the audience to enjoy and read. I do not have much exposure to books as I am more of a graphics person, therefore, it was really hard for me to present the report in story manner. I believe after this; I should really take some time to read more books just in case I might like to write a story in the future.

Once again, I would like to thank Professor Moshood for your guidance throughout the past 13 weeks and I would hope to be taught by you again in the next trimester! Hope you have had a wonderful time teaching us.”

Student Reflection 2

“This is my reflection on this journey in the sustainable building engineering module……

On the very first day, I was intrigued by the way this module was delivered. Prior to attending this module, my initial thoughts were that it is going to be the same as other modules where the professor will be going through slides and videos to share the knowledge with us. However, it was the exact opposite. Firstly, the content in the slides were very little. There is honestly not much content to be read. Instead, there were many links to web pages and articles for us to self read. That is where I realize, this module is not going to be easy as we have to do our own reading before coming to class if not we are not going to learn anything.

Professor Moshood did share the reason why he delivered his classes this way and it was to trigger our critical thinking and reflective mindset in our brain. Never have I thought that these two items are of such great importance in our learning. In fact, I did not feel like I was in an engineering class but more like a TED talk. I am really appreciative of what he has shared with us and I believe this will be a great asset to have as I progress in my life. Professor Moshood did emphasize at the start that this is a journey of self-learning and he himself is learning from us too. He had set an open stage for us to learn from each other by asking questions. He firmly believes that constantly asking questions will trigger our brain to think critically. By questioning the question, it is surprising to see that a particular problem has many other factors to it and get us to see them in a different perspective.

We were given the chance to apply this new thinking process in the weekly tutorial sessions and our final task, which was to give our solution to a particular water wastage issue. This new way of thinking systematically have helped us greatly when it comes to identifying the problem and associating the solution with human behavior. We believe that this solution will be more effective in preventing such occurrences from happening again. The task also challenged us to write a story book for our final report instead of the conventional style which was really tough. This module has broken many firsts for myself and reaffirm my belief that there is nothing we cannot do. It is whether we are brave enough to step out of our comfort zones.

Throughout the 13 weeks journey, I believe I have benefited greatly from this module in terms of my critical and reflective thinking capability. I might not be proficient in it yet, but I have made my first step forward and often that is the hardest step. I’ll continue to apply what I have learnt in problems that I may face in the future. Thank you, Professor Moshood!! I know we will meet again :).”

Student Reflection 3

“SIE 2013, Sustainable Building Engineering module, have been a love and hate module, when I initially hear this module and the content it will carry, I am very interested it in as some topics like indoor air quality (IAQ), Green mark building, and Environmental Management System (EMS) SIO 14001: 2015 these are topic that I have been taught before in Polytechnic, so it really brings me back to the days when I am studying Environmental and Water Technology.

The assignments and project initially really look like a heavy task when, I was first brief on it. Having weekly reflection question and 1 minute’s presentation was really difficult at first as I am not used to preparing for presentation weekly and in such and short and condense manner of 1minutes, and the weekly reflection question that pushes me to think beyond of just what I am taught, thinking from different perspective where different from the usual thing of doing. Despite learning similar topics but I feel like it is not just refreshing for me but something extra where every lesson, prof will input his thinking and value to allow us to further understand the topic in our own ways.

When approaching the group project, where we have to find hospital issues relating to energy or water wastage due to human behavior, it may seem like a simple topic at first but after further thinking, it is not easy as in the past we would usually think of the norm of how is energy and water wasted but we don’t further think in depth into how it is wasted like is its human behavior or is it other factors. Human behavior is not something that can be easily identified unless we really observe and see how people thinks and do things. This pushes me to do read up online, on how human behavior has impacted on environmental changes and how can we correct them for the better.

Beside the project topic being difficult, we would also have to approach/collaborate with an actual healthcare facility, usually in the past it would just be like in a scenario base on where we pretend that this project is collaborating with an organization but this time round it is real, where we have to approach the organization and request for an actual site visit, doing interview and having back and forth email/zoom meetings to update the status of our project. This really give me a real-life experience where I get to interact with 3rd parties to work on a project. This has help me to broaden my spectrum.

Overall SIE2013 have been an enjoyable module, where I have not only learned about the sustainable building engineering topics but also able to input my own critical thinking and broaden my presentation skills where, I feel I have slowly improved to be better and more confident.”

Student Reflection 4

“Before this module, the concept of sustainability was extremely vague. Furthermore, the name of the degree that I am pursuing is “Sustainable Infrastructure Engineering.” But what is it really? What is sustainability, and how does infrastructure and building relate to it? Before this module, if I am asked about what sustainability is, I would be answering incoherently with stutters.

This module has managed to unveil what the concept of sustainability means, while leaning more towards the context of building. Starting from the lectures which covered sustainable building engineering (SBE) in terms of its principles, design thinking processes, and digital solutions, helped to provide a well-rounded overview of SBE. The subsequent topics on resource consumptions, indoor air quality and EMS were useful to know with regards to building management. With the Prof adopting a more ‘philosophical’ approach in teaching, I was able to absorb the content better as compared to a more prescriptive teaching.

The tutorials and the presentations were the area that really helped me to understand the content. Being required to research with a self-directed learning approach, while needing to be equipped with sufficient information to tackle the post-presentation Q&A helped to reinforce the knowledge learnt and gained from the lecture and individual research. Now that the module is ending, I feel that the module has impacted me well enough that I would be able to explain what SBE is, and how to design such that it is more sustainable.

The more interesting contents, for me, were the prescriptive-based vs performance- based approaches, and indoor air quality. The myriad of contaminants and chemicals as factors affecting indoor air quality were dazzling to know. How organisations perform their tasks can greatly affect their outcome, future moves, and their organisation culture. There are situations where prescriptivebased approach is only suitable, for example, in the army where instructions are often passed topdown. But whenever performance- based approach is allowed, it should be the preferred approach as the result will be better and changes for improvements are easier to be monitored.”