Global Challenges (Global Innovation) BASc

The Core Spine encourages you to think boldly about global challenges in a creative and transdisciplinary manner. It will build skills in creative thinking, the use of creative research and development methods, as well as scaffolding a range of essential individual and team-based skills needed for the workplace and for effective agency as an engaged member of society and your community.

The core spine is made up of four elements:

• A transdisciplinary approach to global challenges will introduce you to key thinkers and approaches across a range of natural sciences, humanities and social sciences. You will also learn how to think across these boundaries, in a transdisciplinary, problem-focused way, and go on to apply transdisciplinary thinking to a range of real world problems.
• Creative thinking with be developed in a weekly ‘ideas lab’ where you will learn about creative ideas that have challenged and changed traditional modes of thinking. You will develop your own creative thinking skills and apply these to project work, stakeholder engagement, and communicating and disseminating project findings.
• Creative research methods will introduce you to the basics of quantitative and qualitative data collection and analysis, and to the philosophy of natural and social scientific methods. Having learned these building-blocks you will then advance to learning creative research methods, such as programming and data manipulation, transformative methods such as community engagement and participatory research, arts-based research,visual methods, and how to use mixed-methods approaches. You will also learn and apply creative forms of engagement and presentation of data.
• Skills development will build your capacity to work effectively in teams, and you will develop skills in project management, client management, making a business case, presentation skills (including team pitches, blogs, vlogs, policy briefings, press releases and project reports), and preparing for the job market and job interviews.

The third year Enterprize Project will bring all these skills together in a stakeholder-defined global challenges group project.

Global Innnovation Pathway: Problems today cannot be solved by technology alone, but demand considerations from all aspects of human society. Innovation needs to be achieved through the interaction of science, technology and art to solve real-world problems as they manifest themselves within different social and environmental contexts. A product is developed from the birth of an idea through to the design, modelling and manufacturing, with involvement of stakeholders through the whole process. This involves transdisciplinary studies for negotiating knowledge across multiple fields including materials, manufacturing, computing and electronics, assisted by the social sciences, business and management. The Global Innovation strand of the Global Challenges BASc will take students through all important development phases to gain essential creative and innovative skills. Students will learn how to utilise knowledge and skills from different fields to produce effective and sustainable innovation in a holistic manner. The study is forward-looking, empowering students with the education they require to work in an increasingly globalised and automated world.

Level 1 (first year)

• Addressing Global Challenges
• Introduction to Global Challenges
• Introduction to Global Innovation
• Fundamental Scientific and Engineering Principles and Methodology
• Transdisciplinary Global Innovation in Society
• Global Innovation Investigation

Level 2 (second year)

• Addressing Global Challenges
• Addressing Contemporary Global Challenges
• Transdisciplinary Knowledge Integration and Negotiation
• Transdisciplinary Science and Engineering
• Global Innovation Integration

Level 3 (third year)

• Arts and Sciences Dissertation in Global Challenges
• Global Challenges in Practice
• Transdisciplinary Global Innovation in Multiple Representations
• Global Innovation Management
• Global Innovation Practice

Read more about the structure of undergraduate degrees at Brunel