This is the transcript for the video What is the Diploma in Innovation and what are the opportunities?
Paul Brown (00:00):
The Diploma of Innovation is a unique offering at UTS. It’s essentially a standalone degree that is done by students at the same time as their core degree. So every summer and every winter, students that have a interest in becoming more innovative, students that want to learn to be a bit more creative, students that want learn how to take their ideas that they learn at university as part of their core degree, or maybe their own startup, students that want to do something and have some sort of impact on the world, every summer and winter, we get together and take you through a whole bunch of different methods and practices and models. So it’s a nice value-add for students that want to stand out from the rest of the crowd.
So one of the really neat things that we do in the Diploma of Innovation is that we provide an opportunity for students to essentially build upon their prior learning and build a innovation project while they’re at university. So what this might look like for some students is that, in the first year they might want to do a startup for example, and we will let you work on the startup during, say, the first winter school. And then in the next summer school, you can continue working on the same startup, but instead of starting from scratch, you’re starting from the point that you begin the subject at. And so, what happens is that you can work on this startup in the first year, the second year, and then by the time you get into your third year, hopefully you’re revenue positive and ready to launch, and you might have created your own job. Or you might have developed some sort of intellectual property, which you can then sell or make available through some other mechanism.
We also encourage students who have areas that they want to specialize in, such as, some of our engineering students want to build certain things or engage in certain types of technology. And we’ll let you, in almost every subject, develop a project which you then continue in each subject. And what that means is, at the end of your three year degree, you have built something. And when you go out there and you’re trying to get a job, you can say, “Well, at university, I had all these great experiences and I learned this and I learned that and here’s are my skills. And also, I built this thing.” And you can really showcase the fact that you are an innovator. You haven’t just learned about innovation, that you’re a creative innovator who can actually walk the talk.