In this course, students will acquire a knowledge of the synergies between communication and storytelling, and learn to harness the necessary techniques and competencies for impactful and creative communication. The course focuses on the following areas: audience and context, verbal and non-verbal communication techniques, and communication mediums. It will underscore the importance of audience and context as the basis of all forms of communication, verbal and/or non-verbal. Students will learn to engage and connect with their audience via storytelling and rhetoric by using the most appropriate techniques and mediums. They will also gain an understanding of the ways in which technology has revolutionized communication and explore how stories are told via a dynamic combination of audio/visual, and/or social media. As part of the assessment, students will produce their own storytelling projects on any issue and in any medium of their choice. These projects can tie in with community engagement activities, overseas programmes, work attachments, or anything else they strongly believe in. This will ensure that students recognise that they can effectively apply the skills and competencies they have acquired in this course to their academic and professional work. They will be able to engage diverse audiences confidently in different settings, and provide clear, well-structured, well-paced and convincing reports across different mediums. In effect, they will mobilise the creative power of focused and concise storytelling arcs and rhetorical techniques in presenting themselves and their ideas, whether they are developing arguments in an academic essay, presenting their professional credentials and track records, making a sales pitch or participating in a strategic planning meeting. In addition, students can implement these competencies for self-empowerment, and for the good of others.

How do some people manage to achieve success in life? In this course, we examine the strategies that successful people use to stay motivated and consistently perform at their very best, overcoming challenges and stressful situations to succeed. By understanding why it is important to win and lose in life, students will learn about the biopsychosocial approach of peak performance, understand mental, physical, and emotional strategies to manage their behaviours, and improve their interactions with the people around them. Drawing upon the multidisciplinary field of performance, this course empowers students with practical strategies as they learn to adopt a growth mindset and apply the habits of high performers to their everyday lives to cope with challenges, achieve their goals, and be resilient in life. 

In the workplace, one’s performance is often evaluated based on skills and competencies – job-specific behaviours defined by an observable set of actions and activities and measured by the application of knowledge, skills, and abilities. This course aims to empower students with the essential skills and competencies required for effective teamwork and the confidence to apply them, taking into consideration cross-functional work contexts, team roles, and influences like culture and personality.

Designed with the experiential learning cycle in mind (concrete experience, reflective observation, abstract conceptualisation, and active experimentation), learning in the course will revolve around case studies, self-reflection, role-play, providing and receiving peer critique, as well as active experimentation as students engage in full-cycle learning. Through the various learning activities, students will have opportunities to experience, think about, and use the relevant skills and competencies required for effective teamwork. Assessment will be in the form of a quiz, class participation, an individual assignment and a group-based assignment.

At the end of the course, students will be able to analyse and apply the skills and competencies for effective teamwork.

In this course, students use a reasoned process to choose a course of action to achieve intended goals by executing a problem-solving framework on a problem of their choice. The framework consists of defining the problem, identifying possible solutions, evaluating the possible solutions and implementing the solution. Problem-solving functions as a vehicle for teaching students critical thinking tools like awareness of cognitive biases and informal fallacies, ethical reasoning, and negotiation skills like empathetic listening in order to identify common interests. The tools are systematically and intentionally introduced to students in the form of exercises infused into their implementation of the problem-solving framework. They help students to question, reason inductively and deductively, and make correct analyses, inferences and evaluations. These tools not only facilitate students’ noticing and integrating new information in changing contexts by thinking using micro and macro understandings, but also facilitate consensus building on team directions. As such, they conduce to decision-making in multidisciplinary contexts. At the end of the course, students are assessed on both problem-solving and critical thinking. 

User-Centred Design is a key differentiator in the success of products or services for human use. It leads to solutions that better address user needs and provide good user experiences. This course aims to inculcate in students the importance and benefits of User-Centred Design for solutions they develop in their different disciplines and how to achieve it. The course will introduce an awareness of human strengths and limitations through the study of Human Factors, together with user research and design skills from the practice of Design Thinking. Through this course, students will learn to consider scientific knowledge about humans, combined with contextual understanding of user activities and needs, when designing, prototyping and testing new or improved products or services.

This course will provide a foundation for students to understand and navigate the complex elements that make up the digital landscape, including online sources, social media platforms, and digital analytics and the collection and deployment of big data. Students will explore how advancements in digital communication affect public discourses, and in turn how such discourses influence and establish dominant perceptions in a world increasingly shaped by digital technologies. Working individually and together in teams, students will identify and investigate perceptions or misperceptions on topics related to their course of study. Examples of topics could include the interpretation of statistical data that frames social issues, approaches to diversity in the classroom, the rationale for taxes, or the use of technology to engage and resolve social and economic problems. Student teams will then design and create a digital product/resource for the purposes of public engagement and education.

In doing so, students will develop fundamental digital literacy skills and awareness, i.e., their ability to evaluate online sources, conduct original research, analyse discourse and media sources, complete complex collaborative projects, and use digital media to assist with decision-making and problem-solving. Course materials will provide theoretical background and content for reflection. Assignments will provide practical experience in conducting and presenting research as well as create space for collaborative experimentation. By producing their own original digital media asset, students will flex their creative and analytical skills. In addition, the production process will require students to consider issues of ownership, integrity, and digital management.

Finally, central to this course is an attention to the learning cycle and individual learning style and team intelligence. As students complete the different components of the project, they will reflect on their own capacities and contributions as well as gain an appreciation of the different learning styles among their teammates.

The ‘smart city’ paradigm is increasingly popular across the globe as the world continues to urbanise. Many societies seem to uphold a common understanding that a ‘smart city’ is one that exploits information and communication technologies (ICT) for more efficient service delivery. Yet, there is little consensus on the definition of a ‘smart city’, and the pragmatic push to use the technologies provides little room for critical examinations on existing and potential societal consequences. The social, cultural, and political enablers and impacts of the ‘smart city’ implementation may vary across local and regional contexts. While advancements of ICT open opportunities for addressing challenges on managing services, spaces, and infrastructures of urbanising populations, critical questions on the impacts of technology-driven development linger in many societies. What is the emerging social and cultural life of societies in ‘smart cities’? To what extent do conceptual understandings of the ‘smart city’ and its contexts (dis-)allow citizens to play a role in shaping their societies? This course enables students to critically explore the ‘smart city’ as a concept and a challenge in contemporary societies and to apply those conceptual understandings. Students will have opportunities to reflect these critical lenses and conceptual explorations on observations of real-life examples that range from everyday experiences to practices in industry partners and in policy-making. Through this course, students will be equipped with basic understandings to conceptually assess the impact of technologies in the everyday life of a ‘smart city,’ and with basic skills to navigate the challenges of rapidly changing information societies.

Societies and people are increasingly operating and living under conditions that are characterised by volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity (VUCA). In an interconnected and interdependent world, geopolitical, economic, and existential issues converge in a confluence of challenges which the world urgently needs to address. In this environment, the ability to effectively apply interdisciplinary understanding to offer fresh, holistic perspectives and solutions for often intractable challenges becomes paramount. In this course, students will critically assess what and how issues are defined, by whom, and for whom through interdisciplinary collaboration and facilitation.

Building on knowledge and skills from NCO201 Learn to Learn, Learn for Life, this course stretches impactful and meaningful learning strategies to application for interdisciplinary collaboration. Drawing on literature from Integration and Implementation Sciences (I2S), this course exposes students to considerations for interdisciplinary thinking, practice, and applications to foster the capacity to address complex and dynamic futures through synthesising disciplinary and stakeholder knowledge, understanding and managing diverse unknowns, and providing integrated support for evaluating and communicating complex issues with selected stakeholders.

At the end of the course, students will be able to: (a) identify disciplinary boundaries and approaches to crossing them; (b) appreciate the challenges and opportunities of adopting interdisciplinarity; (c) apply interdisciplinary approaches to analyse, evaluate and communicate complex issues such as environmental, social, economic, and political challenges; and (d) collaborate effectively to innovate for a better world.