English Courses Curriculum

Course number: 82032

Lecture: 2 hours 2 credits

Prerequisites: English A level or above

This course provides students with the essential communication tools to function in an international professional, technological and business environments, an arena that is conducted primarily in English. This course will help students develop a clear understanding of the strategic importance of written communication for professional purposes.

Students will learn about principles and characteristics of communication in professional settings. They will also develop skills for grammatical accuracy, precise vocabulary, clear style, and appropriate tone for formal professional communication. This course focuses primarily on academic writing and reading skills, with a secondary focus on speaking in academic contexts.

Course number: 84099

Lecture: 2 hours, 2 credits

Prerequisites: English A level or above

Entrepreneurship and innovation are known to be crucial drivers of business development and economic growth. But where do these two dimensions of progress come from? In this course we examine the historical origins of creative ideas and how they have materialized throughout modern era. We will discuss the history of innovation in technology, art, and other fields, seeking to understand both its causes and its implications.

How did the Scientific Revolution, from Galileo to Newton, affect technological progress? What forces – social, political and cultural – made Britain the engine of inventions during the Industrial Revolution? Why are Jews prominent in business and science? These are the kinds of questions we will look at, focusing on several cases from the past and the present to understand how creative ideas, guided by entrepreneurial action have turned into useful innovations.

Course number: 84098

Lecture: 2 hours 2 credits

Prerequisites: English A level or above

Online social network sites have become active political forums in the information age, where revolutionary technology has made the media more readily available than ever before. Outlets such as Internet websites, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter are accessed on phones and the news media update breaking news seconds of its release. In the new media environment, the public has the ability to be active on social networks and engage with the media by commenting on blogs, sending articles and videos. The public is no longer a passive observer of the media and can actively engages in the media and influence the political discourse. In this course, we look at how the Internet and new media technologies have affected the ways in which the public gets its news and how it changes public perception of the political spectrum. We assess whether the public is more informed today or if the internet has become saturated with user-generated content that provides a polarized account of the news.

Course number: 89901

Hybrid classes: 2 hours, 2 credits

Prerequisites: English AB level or above

Engineers, designers, technology developers of the digital era are required to understand not only the technologies themselves but also the technology's relationship to the market and the forces that govern it.

This course is designed to introduce students to the most influential technological developments in the past 30 years and their effect on the way the business market thinks, reacts, and behaves.

We will discuss the change in users’ priority as well as preferences which led technologies to be used in the most creative ways. We will discuss areas such as Information analytics and Big Data revolution and the web development and its influence on our lives. We will explore the changes in Social networking, buying and selling, communicating and advertising as well as education.

The course explores the past, the present, will touch on the future, and try to determine which technologies will keep advancing and which will become obsolete; Which technological events are Game Changers and which are Disruptive.

We will discuss real-world examples of market trends & developments and analyse advantages and disadvantages in their way. For a final paper Students will be required to choose one area they are interested in and, using a set of guidelines, analyse the development, its influence on the market and its success/failure path.

Course number: 83002

Lecture: 2 hours, 2 credits

Prerequisites: English A level or above

What makes up Israeli identity and in what ways has it changed across time? What makes Israeli society so complex? How did a country of refugees and kibbutzniks turn into a Startup Nation? What are the political and economic challenges Israel is facing today?

This course explores the Israeli experience – past, present, and (even) future – through four key dimensions, each given by a different lecturer: migrations and identities; politics and communications; gender and society; technology and enterprise.

By this multidisciplinary approach and by the diversity of themes, the course creates a broad portrayal of Israel and Israeli-ness. Furthermore, work will be done in mixed teams of international and domestic students to make the learning process more interactive and productive.

Course number: 82012

Lecture + workshop:  4 hours, 4 credits

Prerequisites: English A level or above

Biomimicry is an interdisciplinary discipline and methodology that studies structural, functional and systemic solutions from nature and abstracts them to generate fresh and new designs. The course will provide the students with experience and practical tools in developing new design solutions via a bio-mimetic approach.

Biomimicry, or bio inspired design, is introduced along the course through project based learning (PBL), integrated with laboratory activities (model biological systems). Through the course the students will initially be introduced to the more relevant fields of bio-mimetic applications, and will be challenged to create real problems scenarios and apply the methodology.

The accomplishment of the course will assist the students in the research and design of viable solutions, and with building a professional presentation of their research and work. The interdisciplinary aspect of the course is emphasized in order to allow team work, the development of communication skills and a multiple perspectives approach to the process of innovation, all critical aspects of future professions.

Course number: 82040

Lecture: 2 hours, 2 credits

Prerequisites: English A level or above

The science of complexity along the last three decades has been developed into a theoretical framework for the study of complex adaptive systems – composed of numerous and diverse interconnected elements or ‘agents’ in interaction – and applied from bacteria in biological processes, to individual in social networks and businesses in an economy. The resulting approach provides fascinating clues into the description and understanding of specifically those situations where linear approaches fail us.

Designers, engineers, managers and educators need in their hands new frameworks that will support their sense-making in their increasingly complex, dynamic and socially influenced challenges.

The introduction of new processes of sense-making is supported in the course by the hands-on approach of Design Thinking - a methodology for research and ideation used in collaborative and innovative projects which allow teams to better share and practically test insight into novel challenges.

The outcome of the course will result in a project aimed to resolve a challenge related to the particular student’s interest and discipline. The project will be developed, alone or in teams, in class along the second part of the course, using the tools provided. The exam will consist in the presentation of the project.

Course number: 88164

Lecture: 2 hours, 2 credits

Prerequisites: English A level or higher

The goal of this course is to expose the student to the way that the four major religions of the world' Judaism, Christianity, Islam and Buddhism, treat questions of ethics in business.

In order to achieve this goal, we will examine and investigate real cases from the modern world of business and commerce, to see how the different religions approach and decide these cases, and compare their conclusions to secular Israeli law, international law and accepted practice in the market place. The subjects that will be dealt with will include copyright, business negotiations, competition, employer-employee relations, verbal agreements and misrepresentation. Special attention will be paid to understanding the ethical and moral way to approach challenging situations in the modern business world.

Course number: 82042

Lecture: 2 hours, 2 credits

Prerequisites: English A level or above

This course will introduce to undergraduate students the study of ethical issues involving the biomedical and life sciences. The course will examine the history of bioethics, beginning with the field’s origins in the mid-twentieth century, till its current institutionalization in hospitals, universities, and government. Bioethical questions require careful attention to particular cases, exploration of possible approaches for resolving dilemmas, and most importantly respectful discourse.

The course will introduce few basics of ethics and argumentation, in order to support the overall attitude, and a number of specific bioethical questions will be considered for discussion in class by the students. The aim of the course is to encourage the student to develop critical thinking and an in-depth examination of the social and cultural aspects of science and research today.

The second aim of the course is to introduce the students to the main moral dilemmas being researched in medical practice, health and environmental policy, and in the introduction of new technologies. The third aim is to encourage an interdisciplinary methodology of discussion based on arguments rather than opinions.

Course number: 82043

Lecture: 2 hours, 2 credits

Prerequisites: English A level or above

Startup is the first phase of any business, whether it is a high-tech business, a factory or even a food store. In each of these cases, there are entrepreneurs, and the business at its first stages is treated as a start-up, a new venture. One of the reasons start-ups fail is that entrepreneurs launch a start-up without evaluating their idea in advance. This course aims to introduce students and provide them with different tools and techniques to evaluate their ideas through a methodological process, starting at the ideation stage (go / no go), advancing to opportunity evaluation and continuing evaluation after launching and operating the start-up. During the course, the students will evaluate new ideas and existing working startups.