Co-creating Learning Tools for Incorporating Practical Ethics into Higher Education in Design

Researcher: Dr Silke Lange

Institution: University of the Arts London

Research Year: 2020

Project aims:

The primary aim of this research was for students and academic staff to collaborate in the design of a digital learning tool that enhances and expands existing approaches to ethical concerns and questions in design education. Secondary aims included: to equip students and staff to engage actively with a wide range of rapidly evolving and complex ethical considerations as they interact with design education above and beyond monitoring of compliance with institutional policies and; to re-center ethical practices within academic fields associated with a range of design practices.

All of the above were achieved through a series of student-staff workshops that shared ethics resources, appraised approaches of embedding ethics into teaching, and developed a form of co-designing a teaching tool. Furthermore, a teaching tool in the form of a set of questions to aggregate and understand key ethical issues design students face was produced (prototype below under 7.). This teaching tool provides the basis from which to build a rigorous, bespoke open source resource of ethics in design research and practice to be shared within and beyond the university.

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