Activity Clusters 6–11 — Profile, Emotional Intelligence, Language

Marks in this group

Note the scheduling trap: 6.1, the LinkedIn profile, is due in week 1 — the same week as group formation, and long before the rest of cluster 6 in week 8. It is also a dependency for activity 4.1, which requires at least one of your three professional contacts to be made through LinkedIn. Do it in week 1, as the syllabus says.

Cluster 6 — profile building (7 marks)

6.1 LinkedIn profile (week 1, 2 marks).

A first-year student with no work experience can still build a creditable profile, and the components that matter are:

• A real photograph. Plain background, face clearly visible, reasonably formal. A phone photograph against a wall is entirely adequate; a cropped group photo is not.
• A headline that says something. "B.Tech Computer Science student at [college] | interested in [something specific]" beats the default, which is just your college name.
• An About section, three or four sentences: what you are studying, what interests you, what you are currently learning.
• Education, with your school and current programme.
• Skills — add them honestly. Listing skills you do not have is a problem that surfaces in an interview, not on the profile.
• Connections — classmates, teachers, seniors, and the professionals from activity 4.1.

A caution worth taking seriously: this is a public profile under your real name, and it will be seen by recruiters in three years and by your teachers this week. Everything on it should be true and should still look sensible when you are in Semester 7.

6.2 Résumé (week 8, 2 marks).

One page. A first-year résumé contains: name and contact details; a short objective; education with marks; skills; projects, even coursework ones; and any certifications, positions of responsibility or activities.

Do not invent experience. A truthful thin résumé is normal for a first-year student and is expected. A padded one is the beginning of a habit that ends badly.

Keep the formatting plain and consistent: one font, consistent dates, reverse chronological order, no photograph unless asked, and export as PDF so the layout survives.

6.3 Self-introduction video (week 8, 3 marks).

Typically one to two minutes; confirm the length with your department.

Structure: who you are → what you are studying and where → your interests and strengths, with one concrete example → your goals → a close.

What actually determines the mark: looking at the camera lens rather than at your own image on the screen; speaking a little more slowly than feels natural; adequate light on your face, ideally from a window in front of you; and a quiet room. Record it three times and keep the third — the first is always stiff.

Write bullet points, not a script. Read-aloud text is audible as such.

Cluster 7 — emotional intelligence (week 9, 2 marks)

A presentation on instances where emotional intelligence was demonstrated.

The standard framework is Goleman's five components, and the prescribed reading is his Emotional Intelligence:

1. Self-awareness — recognising your own emotions as they occur.
2. Self-regulation — managing them rather than acting on them.
3. Motivation — internal drive beyond reward.
4. Empathy — recognising emotions in others.
5. Social skills — managing relationships and influencing well.

Note the difference from cluster 3: empathy is one component of emotional intelligence, not the whole of it. A presentation here that simply repeats your empathy presentation misses four fifths of the concept.

Use a real observed instance and name which component it illustrates — a teacher who noticed a student was struggling and changed approach (empathy and social skills), or someone who was provoked and did not react (self-regulation).

Cluster 8 — diversity (week 10, 3 marks, group)

A short video, 3 to 5 minutes, on diversity aspects observed in our society.

Diversity here includes language, religion, caste, region, gender, ability, socio-economic background and age. Kerala offers a great deal of observable material — a campus that draws from several districts, or a workplace with migrant workers from other states, for example.

Handle it respectfully. Portray difference, not stereotype; if you film or quote people, ask permission. The mark is for observation and presentation, and a video that reduces a community to a caricature will be marked down for good reason.

Keep to 3–5 minutes. Assign roles in the group — filming, editing, narration — and agree a deadline a few days before the real one.

Cluster 9 — interview skills (week 10, 2 marks)

Take an online interview skills session, such as a robotic (AI-conducted) interview, then self-reflect and report.

A robotic interview records you answering timed questions without a human present, which is unnerving the first time and is exactly why it is a useful exercise. Many free platforms offer practice sessions.

Your report should be a reflection, not a transcript: what you found difficult, what you noticed watching yourself back, and what you will change. Recognising that you say "basically" eleven times, or that you answer before thinking, is the deliverable.

Common first-attempt findings, so you know what to look for: filler words, answers that trail off without a conclusion, looking away from the camera, and answering a question other than the one asked.

Cluster 10 — listening (week 11, 2 marks)

Take an online listening test, reflect and report. Free IELTS and TOEFL practice listening tests are widely available and are a reasonable choice.

Listening is a separate skill from understanding English, and the test usually makes that clear. What breaks down is typically speed, unfamiliar accents, numbers and dates, and holding information while continuing to listen.

Report your score and, more usefully, which type of item you lost marks on, since that is what tells you what to practise.

Cluster 11 — English language (weeks 8–12, 12 marks)

The largest cluster in this group.

11.1 Vocabulary (week 8, 4 marks) — the single largest item. Classroom activities, individual or group. Sustained vocabulary building works through reading and use, not lists: keep a small notebook of words met in reading, with the sentence you met them in, and use each one within a week.

11.2 Error identification (week 9, 2 marks). The errors Indian English speakers make most consistently, and therefore the ones worth knowing:

• Subject–verb agreement — "The list of items is on the desk", not are. The subject is list, not items.
• Articles — a, an, the, and their omission. Malayalam has no articles, which is exactly why this needs attention.
• Tense consistency within a passage.
• Prepositions — discuss about something is wrong; you simply discuss it.
• "Only" placement — "I only saw him" and "I saw only him" mean different things.
• Countable and uncountable — equipments, informations and furnitures are not words.

11.3 Commonly misspelt, mispronounced and confusing words (week 10, 2 marks).

Misspelt: accommodation, separate, occurrence, definitely, receive, necessary, privilege, maintenance, recommend, embarrass.

Confused pairs: affect/effect, principal/principle, complement/ compliment, stationary/stationery, advice/advise, its/it's, lose/loose, than/then, accept/except, assure/ensure/insure.

Two that matter in engineering writing: affect is usually the verb and effect the noun — temperature affects resistance, and the effect is a change in resistance. Advice is the noun and advise the verb.

11.4 Self-reflection report (week 12, 2 marks) on your improvement in English communication through the course. Honest and specific: what you could not do in week 1 and can do now.

11.5 Group presentation (weeks 11–12, 2 marks) on your experience of using online collaboration tools and on time management against the Gantt chart from 1.3.

This is where cluster 1 comes back. A group that drew the chart in week 1 and never looked at it will have to say so. A group that reviewed it weekly has a real story about what slipped and why — which is a better presentation and, incidentally, a better semester.