This course provides a basic understanding of methodologies of critical inquiry that open up possibilities for research, practices and social innovation. Through understanding, questioning, and acquiring knowledge from experiences, larger bodies of thought and literature, and different social research methods; students can learn deeply, and think critically and reflectively about global challenges. The course promotes self-direction by not assigning topics, but rather encouraging students to identify a challenge that they are interested in and investigate it with suitable research methods. Students will learn research question formulation, elements of research process within quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods approaches, and ethical principles relevant to research. They will use these methodological underpinnings to critically review literature and information relevant to their interests, explore how research findings are interpreted to support their objectives in exploring the research topic, and formulate proposals of potential solutions for the research problem. Also, computational and big data analytic methods for real world issues inquiries will be introduced. They are encouraged to develop a number of alternative answers, or hypotheses, and to weigh evidence for and against each. The course aims to develop students’ proficiency in scientific inquiry, which avoids the pitfalls of ordinary human inquiry, for practice and social innovation.