【Social Innovation and the Future of Cities】
Interdisciplinary Micro-Program
【Mission】
The “Urban Futures Micro-Course” utilizes future thinking methodologies to explore urban-centric issues, thereby training forward-thinking abilities and fostering diverse understandings, vision construction, and practical strategy design for urban studies. This micro-course is divided into three major categories: foundational courses, thematic courses, and practical-oriented courses. The foundational courses emphasize the development of basic future thinking skills; the thematic courses focus on specialized topics such as environmental change, urban development, and sustainable development; and the practical-oriented courses emphasize combining practical training to achieve public communication and dialogue. Through a step-by-step learning design, this program aims to equip students with both knowledge and practical skills, nurturing STEAM talent.
【Course Planning】
Students must complete at least one course in each of the three domains—”Foundational Interdisciplinary Studies,” “Thematic Issues,” and “Practical Orientation”—within their chosen micro-course program, for a total of at least four courses. Additionally, they must achieve passing grades in these courses to qualify for the issuance of the program certificate.
| Domain | Department Offering the Course | Course Name | Course Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| Foundational Interdisciplinary Studies | Futures Studies (R Group) | FUTURES STUDIES IN SOCIETY- CITY FUTURES | The “future” is not a destiny, nor is it imaginary, but rather a possibility that comes from observing phenomena, analyzing trends, and predicting choices. This course explores the modernity of urban development and the issues encountered under globalization, as well as possible creative strategies for action. |
| Foundational Interdisciplinary Studies | Futures Studies (R Group) | FUTURES STUDIES IN SOCIETY | This course focuses on the era of globalization context to help students understand their situations (such as educational, working, marriage, private life etc.)Through the class, students will have future conscious and know how to prepare well and earlier to create their future. |
| Foundational Interdisciplinary Studies | Center for General Education and Core Curriculum | EXPLORATION FIELD-EXPLORING INTELLIGENT HUMANITIES, BUSINESS | Exploring the connection between intelligent humanities, business management, and social innovation, this course aims to understand how to apply humanities and social sciences along with intelligent technologies to drive business innovation and social change. The course will integrate modern management tools such as artificial intelligence, big data, and social enterprises, and discuss how to effectively address social issues and promote sustainable development. |
| Foundational Interdisciplinary Studies | Department of Education and Futures Design | FIELD WORK METHODS | This course is a practicum-oriented course that aims to lead students to explore the methodology of fieldwork and to learn how to understand local knowledge and social culture through observation, interviewing, recording, and analyzing. Students will be guided to complete a small-scale field project through observation and interviewing exercises in the field. The course will emphasize the initiation of perception, the construction of narratives, and the respect of ethics, so that students can develop the basic skills of social observation and cultural understanding. |
| Foundational Interdisciplinary Studies | Social Analysis (W Group) | PRINCIPAL OF SOCIOLOGY | This course aims to enhance students’ understanding of foundational sociology and gain insight from contemporary sociological theories and research. Students can obtain a broad view of the core of sociology, key concepts, and methods but also endeavour their abilities to think as sociologists, to invest in and understand the complex social phenomena. |
| Thematic Issues | Global Outlook (T Group) | GLOBALIZATION OF CULTURE | The Globalization has reached a more radical phase than before. Moreover, after the Cold War all nations identify themselves with their original cultures and accordingly many conflicts broke out. This course introduce the mutual influence as well as the conflict among different cultures. Besides it will take the effects of the globalization in the other fields into account the point out the influence of these effects on the cultural issues. |
| Thematic Issues | Department of Architecture | AN INTRODUCTION TO URBAN DESIGN | This course provides an understanding of the dynamics that has created urban environment, including cultural, political and spatial issues. It also provides the theoretical context of the complementary urban designers and planners. |
| Thematic Issues | College of Business and Management | URBAN ECONOMY AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT | Urban economics is defined as the intersection of geography and economics. It analyzes the location choice and spatial distribution of urban activities as well as the causes of urban problems from an economic perspective. The purpose of the course is to familiarize students with the basic concepts and analytic techniques of urban economics. Students will acquire relevant knowledge through lectures, exercises, quizzes, and exams. In addition, the over-focus on economic growth leads to environmental pollution and social injustice in cities. Therefore sustainable development will be discussed. |
| Thematic Issues | Department of Transportation Management | URBAN AND REGIONAL PLANNING | The purpose of the course is to familiarize students with issues, concepts, history, theories, and regulations in urban and regional planning. Students will acquire relevant knowledge through lectures, examinations, discussions, and team projects. |
| Thematic Issues | Department of Industrial Economics | ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT | This course introduces the basic concepts related to global change and sustainable development. It encourages students to analyze problems resulting from consumption and production and the relationship between economic growth and prosperity. It also introduces command-and-control and economic incentive instruments and their applications. Finally, through hands-on service learning activities, students can directly contribute to sustainable development. |
| Thematic Issues | Department of Education and Futures Design | THEORIES AND METHODS OF FUTURES RESEARCH | This course offers to work with students to progressively gain futures literacy skills in anticipating the challenges of the future. In this class we will use activities to introduce key futures concepts such as anticipation, dominant images of the future. The objective of this course it to have students learning to use futures tools and methodologies to understand, challenge and develop images of the future of society that are more sustainable, equitable and simply live-able. Learn with in-class group discussions and activities. |
| Thematic Issues | Department of Education and Futures Design | LECTURES ON SOCIAL INNOVATION AND FUTURE ENTERPRISE | This course is provided for 3th and 4th year undergraduate students. It’s the course at Tamkang University which is provided in a collaboration between an academic program (between the Department of Education and Futures Design) and the 104 job bank. We’re trying to deliver expertise knowledge for students to prepare their job application in their career. |
| Thematic Issues | Department of Management Sciences | AI AND SUSTAINABLE INDUSTRY INNOVATION | The course covers digital modeling, programming, and gamified learning design. Through project-based learning (PBL) and service learning, students explore on-campus sustainable facilities, green energy zones, eco-friendly businesses, and mobile payment-based green consumption. The course applies digital technologies to AI campus and sustainable living. Students will develop independent thinking, virtual sustainable campus ecosystem that bridges that brings technology and life, turning digital innovation into real social impact. |
| Thematic Issues | Civil Society and Participation (S Group) | SCIENCE TECHNOLOGY AND PUBLIC PARTICIPATION | This course aims to provide students with basic theories about technological society and citizen participation, enabling students to observe the actual operation in daily life in Taiwan, and to identify issues and put forward analytical viewpoints |
| Practical Orientation | Civil Society and Participation (S Group) | SOCIAL INNOVATION | Social innovation is a collaborative approach by public-private partnerships to address wicked issues in contemporary civil society. It seeks to find innovative solutions to these complex and challenging problems. The ideals of social innovation are often delivered through social enterprise. This course introduces the fundamental concepts of social innovation and its relevance to CSR, USR, SDGs, and ESG. In the meantime, we discuss relevant issues between social enterprises and the public sector. In addition, Taiwan and other countries are discussed as examples of social innovation. |
| Practical Orientation | Department of Education and Futures Design | SPECULATIVE DESIGN | This course is a hands-on oriented program that aims to guide students to explore future possibilities through the methodology of speculative design, and to cultivate the ability to critically reflection and creatively respond to technological, social, and cultural issues. The course covers tools for future thinking, design narratives, and prototyping, and through hands-on activities and presentations, students will be guided to develop socially conscious and innovative design proposals for the future. |
| Practical Orientation | Department of Education and Futures Design | SOCIAL DESIGN | The core of social design lies in applying design thinking, focusing on human-centric approaches to address societal issues. Design thinking is a problem-solving method centered around people, emphasizing starting from user needs. Through steps such as empathy, observation, insight, and more, it seeks to identify the root causes of problems and propose innovative solutions. Social design applies design thinking to solve social issues, effectively addressing societal problems and enhancing social well-being. |
| Practical Orientation | Department of Education and Futures Design | DESIGN ON SUSTAINABILITY | Sustainable development has been the most powerful discourse in the last 4 decades, especially after “Our Common Future” was released in 1987. |
| Practical Orientation | Department of Business Administration | SERVICE INNOVATION AND DESIGNING | The course content of Service Innovation and Design can be deconstructed into two main learning-teaching modules: Service Innovation and Service Design. As a practical discipline, this course supplements theoretical knowledge through practical applications, thereby promoting the learning and implementation of design thinking methodologies. |