Teacher: sebastian Dennerlein
Problem statement
Ethical reflection will become part of the working practice of professionals in domains ranging from a green economy to health tech, for example. This is due to increasingly louder voices demanding a new imperative that replaces “the faster the better” with a more social, ecological and economical sustainable and responsible approach (cf. RRI - responsible research and innovation). Especially in technology prone domains, there is the chance to continuously address ethical issues in the design process.
To make such ethical design reflection processes work as part of agile software development, for example, it is important to understand the factors influencing ethical reflection in nowadays interprofessional working teams, provide guidance in structuring the discussion around ethical issues, formulate effective reflection prompts and inform working practices to not only act retrospectively but prospectively.
Take the perspective of workplace learning on this research theme, allows asking many interesting questions. You could study questions like:
- How can we facilitate and structure the identification of reflection on ethical issues?
- What role play personal characteristics such as reflection skills and domain knowledge in the ability to ethically reflect?
- How can we measure the “quality” of ethical issues as well as reflection questions?
Method
Depending on the interest of the student and the question or problem to be resolved, the methods can include quantitative and qualitative means in design assignment or traditional experimental study designs.
Profile of the student
- Interest in workplace learning and related theories
- Interest in technology design processes
Resources
- Dennerlein, S., Wolf-Brenner, C., Gutounig, R., Schweiger, S., & Pammer-Schindler, V. (2020, September). Guiding socio-technical reflection of ethical principles in TEL software development: The SREP framework. In European Conference on Technology Enhanced Learning (pp. 386-391). Springer, Cham.
- Dennerlein, S., Wolf-Brenner, C., Gutounig, R., Schweiger, S., Pammer-Schindler, V., & Endedijk, M. D. (2022). Towards a framework for guiding the socio-technical reflection of ethical issues in technology enhanced learning. EARLI 11th SIG 14 Conference.
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If you are interested in this theme, please contact the graduation coordinator of PLT: Mireille Post-Hubers