Overview
Jointly delivered by the Royal College of Art and Imperial College London, the Design for Global Challenges Summer School was a multidisciplinary programme designed for undergraduate students currently studying at a university with an interest in learning how to tackle world challenges through service design.
The aim of the programme was to enable students to explore some of the current global challenges in climate change, global health and cyber security and propose an innovative idea to design a service that could tackle one of the areas.
In addition to the global challenges, students gained an insight into data science, heard the latest advances in robotics and met some of our graduate entrepreneurs who are driving progress by launching their design innovations into the commercial world.
Students developed personal and professional skills through interactive workshops in design thinking, team-building and presentation and experienced team-based learning through a service design group project.
Furthermore, as RCA and Imperial College London are multidisciplinary spaces for education, research, translation and commercialisation, the summer school students experienced the benefit of being part of a leading research community and the opportunity to engage with RCA and Imperial student ambassadors through social activities.
Course structure
49 contact hours spread over seven days covering lectures, workshops, tutorials, project work, social activities and relevant visits.
Students were allocated in small groups for project work, which was carried out through team-based learning with supervision. They presented final projects in groups to a panel on the last day of the programme. The team with the best project was awarded a prize.
Outcomes
On completion of the summer school, students were able to:
- Analyse and evaluate the impact of climate change on society and the environment.
- Analyse and evaluate the impact of major global diseases and the changing future of healthcare policies and innovations.
- Analyse and evaluate the challenges of the internet and new frontiers in cyberspace/digital media security that companies face.
- Understand how advances in robotics and data science technology are transforming the future.
- Apply service design tools and develop a service to tackle a global challenge.
- Understand how businesses differentiate and compete in global markets, and to define and build business models to establish competitive advantage.
- Understand how technology are transforming marketing and advertising.
- Develop and practise valuable professional skills in team building, leadership and presentation.
- Develop and employ team-building skills to work as a team towards a group design project.
Students joined from Chinese universities including:
China Art College, Shanghai Jiaotong University, Southeast University, Southern University of Science and Technology, Tsinghua University, University of Nottingham Ningbo China, Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University and Zhejiang University.
“I learned how to work effectively as a team, brainstorm creative ideas and present them, and most importantly, I gained a belief and determination to solve global problems.”
“Enthusiastic, encouraging and professional teachers will lead you to develop your abilities and create your own projects by sharing a wealth of knowledge.”
“The Imperial-RCA Global Challenges Course is a truly engaging and dynamic experience, the insightful academic environment and the exposure to international perspectives are unparalleled. The teams from both Imperial College and RCA are amazing and well co-ordinated, they were cooperative and very supportive. A hearty thanks to the teaching faculty for such a well-designed interdisciplinary curriculum and activities. We were delighted when we found out that nearly every surveyed student said they would recommend this programme to a friend!”
“It is a joyful experience collaborating with the RCA on these online short courses. The RCA team are professional and enjoyable to work with. The collaboration has enhanced the delivery of this programme with both institutions sharing expertise, best practice and knowledge. We’re looking forward to many more successful collaborations to come.”
“We are in an era of dramatic change, at the threshold of a very different world. This course enables students to explore current global challenges in climate change, global health, cyber security. In small groups they work together to propose an innovative idea to design a service that could tackle one of these areas which they pitch to a panel of experts at the end of the course.”
Key details
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Custom short courses
Through our portfolio of innovation masterclasses and workshops, the RCA provides senior-level professionals and business leaders with critical business skills. We deliver courses for businesses, organisations and universities on design thinking, service design, creative leadership, disruptive innovation, entrepreneurship, human-centred design, artificial Intelligence and healthcare design.
We can tailor the curriculum for a day, a week, or several weeks over the course of a year with interrelated projects. Courses can be delivered online, on-campus, hybrid or at partner organisations. Previous courses have been delivered in Dubai, Japan, Hong Kong, China, Singapore, Germany and Mexico.
Find out more here.
Please get in contact with us if you would like to discuss developing a custom programme:
Peter Christian, Head of Executive Education
Hattie Allen, Executive Education Manager
