Course Description

Core Courses

APS501 Experiential Learning in Applied Social Sciences
This course provides opportunities for students to learn through execution, generate new insights and draw conclusions on their learning by continuous involvement in learning reflection process. Students will explore and critically examine real life social science practices and problems, and recommend possible solutions with action plans. To strengthen students’ whole person development in concepts and experiential learning skills, they are required to participate actively in seminars, workshops on research and communication skills, and field trips, etc. Students will also develop their competence in team building and problem solving through organising learning activities.

LCE501 Advanced Business Communication
This course strengthens students’ skills in approaching various business communication scenarios with assertiveness, whether it is an interview, a boardroom presentation, or an online team meeting. It also provides students with a conceptual framework and language tools to accomplish academic and business goals professionally and strategically.

LCE502 English for Academic Purposes
The course helps develop students’ language skills necessary to communicate effectively in English in an academic context. It focuses on cultivating students’ practical skills and critical thinking needed to write an academic paper (i.e. research proposal), familiarizing students with the various stages of writing an academic paper, such as formulating research questions and hypotheses, synthesizing ideas and judgments. The importance of avoiding plagiarism is also emphasized. It also includes how to effectively deliver an academic discourse.

MIH502 Comparative Social Policy Research Methods
This course begins with a broad overview of the reasons why we might want to compare social policy, how we might compare its key pillars, such as education, employment, social security, housing and health care and the problems that can occur when we do. The remaining sessions are then based around a consideration of comparative data provided by international organizations, including OECD, World Bank, UNESCO offering students the opportunity to explore the mixed economies of these pillars and the key structural changes occurring in the context of increasing internationalization through ‘hands on’ exercises.

The course as a whole is underpinned by a series of interrelated data workshops that require students to explore and interpret empirical data relating to social policy. These workshops will enhance students’ understanding by requiring them to relate and apply conceptual and theoretical knowledge, e.g. considering the big structural changes affecting labour markets and international student movement, to the raw data in order to give it meaning. The exercises will also allow students to test the validity of arguments put forward by key theorists, e.g. the effect of government policy on global trends in social mobility, and to explore some of the methodological difficulties involved in conducting macro-comparative research. Students studying on different programs will meet in separate group seminars to share their key findings and learning outcomes on a weekly basis. The data exercises are preceded by a practical skills workshop that introduces the key software packages (OECD.Stat, Excel, SPSS) that need to be used throughout the course. The assessment for the course will build on these exercises and group seminar discussion by allowing students to choose their own research question relevant to their study program.

Elective Courses

APS505 Introduction to Research Tools
Research tools can be defined as vehicles that broadly facilitate research and related activities. Research tools enable researchers to collect information, organise information, analyse data, visualise findings, and writing an article. This course is designed to introduce a series of selected tools to students that have gained prevalence and been highly recommended in social science disciplines. These tools will follow the correct path in research and to ultimately produce high quality writing outputs with more accuracy and efficiency, facilitating further advanced studies in taught postgraduate programs. Research tools consist of a hierarchical set of nodes. In this course we mainly focus on introducing tools used for 1) Searching the literature; 2) Organising the literature; 3) Writing a literature review; 4) Searching second-hand data; 4) Analysing data and presenting findings.

MCG504 Intangible Cultural Heritage and Heritage Conservation
This course provides an overview to the development of Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) with focus on the Greater Bay Area. Students will be introduced to the discussion related to UNESCO’s adoption of the Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2003. The concept of heritage will be explored from an inter-disciplinary approach to cover heritage practices including the identification, assessment, research, preservation, interpretation, and promotion of various forms of cultural heritage.

MIH603 Cases and Workshop for Management Issues in Education
This course provides a platform for students to critically reflect upon issues and practices in school /university management. Students will be engaged with school principals and university administrators who are experienced in school and higher education administration / management for critical analysis of major management issues and relevant cases in education. Through dialogues and action learning, students will be able to analyse how major management ideas and practices which are popular in the Western societies have influenced school management and university governance in Asia.

MIH504 Internationalisation and Quality Management in Higher Education
The concept of “quality” has become a central theme in modern in Higher Education Institutions (HEIs). Rising tuition fees and the increasing role that it plays in funding universities, state funding, and the desire to apply management principles to the running of universities have all led to the emphasis on quality. The notion of quality has departed from its origins in quality control and assurance that takes a retrospective view of quality in favour of the idea of quality enhancement. Quality enhancement is a forward looking and progressive examination of quality with a view to bringing about change, innovation and improvement and this course will examine practical ways of bringing about such enhancement.

MGT601 Managing Conflict in Organisations
This course is designed to introduce the role, importance, and methods of managing conflict in organisations. Students will be asked to consider the different forms of conflict in organisations and work-home interface. They will review and discuss research on conflict in work and cross-discipline teams, top management teams, leadership, between departments, and between organisations. Studies also indicate that well-manage conflict can promote quality decision-making, stronger relationships, innovation, organisational commitment, and employees’ well-being. Students will review and discuss research identifying major dynamics and conditions under which conflict can be constructive. Techniques in stress management and crisis management will also be introduced. The emphasis will be on giving students both an understanding and skills that they can use to manage conflict productively.

MIH501/SOC505 Globalisation, Policy and Society
This course focuses on several key topics in social development in East Asia and the rest of the world, with particular reference to analyse how education and social policy have been affected by the growing trends of globalisation. The course takes an explicitly comparative approach with each of the issues examined through case studies of societies located in East Asia like Hong Kong, Taiwan and mainland China, Japan, Korea and Singapore, critically examining how the globalising economy and the growing tide of neo-liberalism have affected educational social policy change. Largely student-centered, the course is structured around student-guided discussions of assigned readings, with the goal of encouraging the drawing of conclusions about important social issues from the comparison of different cases, such as the massification of higher education, youth unemployment, youth transitions and social mobility. Through preparation for discussions, organising group presentations and completing written assignments, students will develop independent inquiry skills to explore the interrelationships between education and social policy and social phenomena.

PSY515 Research Methods in Work Psychology
This course provides an overview of advanced research methods used in industrial and organisational psychology including research ethics. Students will learn to determine whether the data investigation approaches are the best ones for the research purpose. Tips on writing research articles are also discussed. Students will have hands-on practice in actual data analyses using statistical software and in research report writing. This course may also include extensive fieldwork experience at a selected site in the local community.

MIH509 Regional Studies on Education in Greater China and East Asia
In collaboration with major universities in Taiwan, Mainland China, Macau and East Asia, special lectures and class discussions, professional visits and cultural tours will be organised for students. In selected Asian societies, students will be engaged in field observations and field visits to develop a more critical understanding of education management and governance through their active participation in and personal experience and critical reflection. More specifically, this course is an intensive and experiential unit, which provides a platform for students to study beyond classroom. Through observing different higher education institutions, student learning experience will be enhanced through theory-field experience integration and reflection.

MIH601 Internationalising Education: Institutional Strategy and Development
In this course, you will explore the origins and development of international higher education with particular focus on current drivers and practices. Drivers include economic, political, cultural, and academic pressures, while the practices covered will include transnational campuses, international collaborations in teaching and research, the recruitment of overseas students and staff, and the use of new distance learning technologies. These will be illustrated through specific examples in different contexts, making use of both the literature and invited speakers.

You will examine different interpretations of internationalisation, distinguishing between surface and deep/ transformational models and how they relate to different drivers. You will compare what criteria of success can be used in different models of internationalisation and their implications for university organisation, strategy, management, and culture. You will explore the tensions that may arise between the local, national, and international dimensions in diverse institutions with different historical roots and roles. You will explore educational, social, and cultural theories of internationalism and cross-cultural interaction, together with post-colonialist and cultural-hegemonic critiques of higher education internationalisation and its links to capitalism and neo-liberalism in the contemporary globalising era.

MIH605 Managing Talents and Finance in Education Institutions
This course covers the management of two most important resources of an institution, namely human resource and financial resource. Students will learn the essential knowledge in human resource management and financial management and are required to apply it in roleplays, cases, and project.

PSY605 Coaching and Counselling in the Workplace
This course is intended as an introduction to the basic concepts and issues of workplace coaching and counselling. Various problems faced by employees that hinder their professional and personal growth are also examined in order to promote civility, teamwork, work-life balance, and well-being in the workplace.

MIH606 Managing Entrepreneurial Education Project
This is an individually supervised and executed capstone project where students will apply what they have learned to a real-world setting. They will demonstrate their knowledge, skills and analytical abilities in the area of international higher education management through the execution of a project on a topic of their choice. Based on the research strength and expertise of the staff at Lingnan University and our strong regional and overseas research networks, students could develop their capstone project on one of the themes related to what they have learned in their courses: (1) Globalisation, Higher Education and Society, (2) Creating an Effective Student Learning Environment, (3) Internationalising Higher Education, (4) Branding and Marketing of Higher Education, (5) Internationalisation and Quality Management in Higher Education, and (6) Effective Management of Resource.