Roots & Wings 2.0

Roots and Wings 2.0 is a series of 1-unit courses that equip students with crucial soft skills so they can thrive in an ever-changing and complex environment.

Through this programme, students can glean skills such as:

• Better self understanding and awareness
• Building mental resilience and fortitude to face life's challenges and transitions
• Strategies to enhance personal effectiveness
• How to collaborate and communicate with others
  

The programme is offered and delivered by the Department of Psychology, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences in collaboration with NUS Centre for Future-ready Graduates.

Programme

A typical Roots and Wings 2.0 course comprises three 3-hour activity-based sessions with an emphasis on experiential learning.

Courses are typically run in classes of 25. There may be multiple classes taking the same course across the academic semester.

There is no prerequisite or preclusion for enrolling in a course.

Upon satisfactory completion of a course, students will receive 1 Unit which can be counted towards the Unrestricted Elective (UE) portion of their graduation requirements. Students can accumulate up to 5 Units in the UE space by taking different courses from Roots & Wings 2.0.

Assessment for a course will typically comprise active participation (around 75%) and written reflection (around 25%). Courses are graded on a CS/CU (Completed Satisfactorily/Completed Unsatisfactorily) basis.

Attendance at all sessions is compulsory. Doing a make up for an absence is possible for valid reasons (e.g., medical leave, death in family, representing NUS for events) with supporting documentation.

Courses

PLS8001 Cultivating Collaboration

This course focuses on soft skills on the interpersonal level in terms of more effective working with other people and reaching for better outcomes jointly.

Through various experiential activities (e.g. role-play, negotiation exercises), students learn to understand the importance of collaboration in various settings and to apply basic techniques to help resolve conflicts and to strive for win-win situations when collaborating with other people in task accomplishment.

PLS8002 Cultivating the Self

This course is designed to help students achieve better self-awareness through the understanding of basic psychological concepts such as self-esteem, social comparison, self-perception and self-handicapping.

Students learn about how they acquire knowledge about themselves, how low self-esteem came about, and what psychologists learned about happiness.

PLS8003 Cultivating Resilience

This course focuses on helping students recognize potential self-defeating beliefs and biases, and to overcome those beliefs.

Students will engage in experiential activities that foster positive emotions, engagement with the work they do and the people they interact with, and a positive narrative of their lives. The general aim of this course is to increase students’ awareness of self-limiting beliefs and to equip them with mindsets / behaviours that build psychological resilience.

PLS8004 Optimizing Performance

This course focuses on soft skills derived from psychological research for students to better manage their performance level in tasks.

Through various experiential activities (e.g. visualization, attention regulation), students learn to develop a set of skills that will be useful for them to optimize their work performance by setting up effective goals, enhancing productivity, and dealing with the challenges of working in demanding and multi-tasking situations.

PLS8005 Elevating Interpersonal Communication

This course focuses on soft skills derived from psychological research for students to develop effective interpersonal communication in everyday social interactions.

Through various experiential in-class activities (e.g. role play, conversation planning, speech practice), students learn about useful concepts and techniques for effective communication such as formulating an argument, asking effective questions, active listening, non-verbal communication, attempting a persuasion, and building relationships.

For more details on the programme as well as frequently asked questions (FAQs), please refer to the Department of Psychology’s website.

For all enquiries, please email psyboxRW@nus.edu.sg.