Ethics in Design Showcase

Introductory page of the Artifacts from the Futures of Postsecondary Education Exploration Toolkit.

Artifacts from the Futures of Higher Education

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Authors: Elisa Arnold, eCampusOntario Laura Viselli, eCampusOntario Thinking about the long-term future can be challenging. It can be too abstract or ambiguous. The possibilities of what may happen can be just as exciting as they are overwhelming, and navigating between those extremes is complex. Human beings have the capacity for futures thinking. We have the imagination and creativity to do so, and it is likely that we are already doing it in some form. It is often our own barriers, like our preconceived notions of the future, societal structures, or our own experiences, that prevent us from engaging in futures thinking. As Maree Conway remarks, “using our imaginations to explore possible futures is something we can all do, as long as we accept that the ‘unimaginable’ is a construct of our times” (113). Engaging in long-term thinking exercises is essential because the choices we make today will shape the possible […]

A slide titled Emo-Guru Emotional Stability Manager

The AI-Assisted Design of Learning Experiences for Echoborgs: Practical Concerns & Speculative Considerations

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Author: Amanda Tkaczyk, MMAI, CIPP/C, CIPT  My Positionality I have a master’s degree in Artificial Intelligence. I have advised, consulted, and built applied AI projects. I am deeply concerned about the environmental, social, emotional, and equity harms of AI, especially with poor regulation, enforcement, and oversight. It can be overwhelming to bring together each of these themes, so any oversight is not due to lack of care. I am enthusiastic about the potential of AI to improve healthcare and food security. I proceed with caution in my personal use of AI tools. I also fully recognize I cannot directly control or police how anyone else uses these tools. Two Moments That Sparked My Project Motivation In Spring 2023, I had experiences in the classroom where students chose to present AI-generated text, on AI-generated slides, with AI-generated data, and AI-generated  scripts. I felt defeated as an educator. While recognizing their autonomy […]

A dog sitting next to a doghouse with rotating blades for walls. Image generated with ChatGPT 4

Speculative Design in a Summer Camp: Tensions around Infantilization

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Authors: Madalyn Wilson-Fetrow, University of New Mexico Vanessa Svihla, University of New Mexico Authors’ Note: This blog contains the exploration of the use of dark themes in ideation, including natural disasters, gun violence, and poverty.  Why would you design a doghouse with rotating blades for walls?  Design fixation, or the process of being taken with and sticking to your first idea, even if it isn’t a particularly good one, plaguing novice designers and requiring consideration from experienced designers. Activities that are intended to increase creativity during the ideation process often reduce empathy (because of the emphasis on unique ideas); conversely, focusing on human-centered ideas exclusively generates fewer and less diverse ideas. This sets up a natural tension for designers who have to make decisions about how they should approach ideation. It becomes an even more critical tension for instructional designers who are themselves facilitating design work. These facilitators, with their […]

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Leveraging Speculative Design for Transformative Organizational Change in Higher Education

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Authors:  Kristen Ferris , The University of New Mexico  Vanessa Svihla, The University of New Mexico  Susannah Davis, The University of New Mexico  Nadia Kellam, The Arizona State University In the ever-evolving landscape of higher education, the pursuit of diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice (DEIJ) remains a formidable challenge. Despite the earnest efforts of change agents, organizational transformations often stumble upon complex barriers rooted in entrenched power dynamics. Amidst these challenges, we use speculative design narratives, which intentionally critique the present, to build commitment to making change even when faced with challenges and barriers. Speculative design is often used as a design practice aimed at exploring and questioning potential futures (Dunne & Raby, 2013).   We created a Community of Transformation (CoT) comprising change agents from STEM departments across various institutional change leadership teams, drawing on speculative design, remixing, and futurisms to foster DEIJ-oriented systems change within higher education. Our aim […]

An image that shows three overlapping circles to demonstrate the characteristics that inform open learning design decisions. The three circles represent pedagogy, process and products.

Open Learning Design in Context: Expanding the Continuum

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Authors:  Verena Roberts, Thompson Rivers University Michelle Harrison, Thompson Rivers University Introduction As open-learning designers, we strive to integrate open educational practices (OEP) in all projects that we are invited to collaborate with. OEPs have been broadly defined and include multiple elements of teaching and learning, such as participatory and critical pedagogies, the use of open licensing and open technologies, the development and adoption of open educational resources (OER), and collaboration with and recognition of multiple voices and perspectives (Tietjen & Asino, 2021). The responsive, contextual, and personalized nature of each person’s open learning awareness and readiness makes open learning design a complex challenge in any learning environment. As Cronin (2018) highlights, “Openness is not a one-time decision, and it is not universally experienced; it is always complex, personal, contextual, and continually negotiated” (p.291). This points to a need to create a supported ethical journey to openness for learning design […]

Author's design of an FM battery less energy harvesting system - 75 hours of play between recharges.

Redesigning Computing for Openness—the Ethics of Consuming Devices

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Author: Brian Sutherland, University of Toronto Introduction Why does the logic of computing involve repeated purchase and consumption of “molded plastic epics” (Gabrys, 2011)? Thinking back on calculation devices and the ethical problem of repeated consumption, a simple solar calculator stands out for its durability. The reason may be sustainability design: early calculators, like more recent Citizen Eco-Drive watches utilize a solar energy harvesting strategy that doesn’t use batteries, consequently they are very low maintenance, long lasting, and tend to not wear out. As there are very few solar powered electronics devices in the market that reflect emerging green narratives of degrowth, reuse and upcycling, this exhibit discusses the history of these rare devices and reinterprets their energy experience design strategies toward modern consumer electronics, demonstrating new prototype devices that feature broad affordability, openness and more ethical consumption.  Questionable ethics? Casio rolls back sustainability in a calculator design. The newer, […]

A diagram of a framework for reflective practice that includes four elements. The elements are: Issues (including legal, policy, pedagogy, access to technology etc) Lenses (BIPOC, LGBTQ, Decolonizing, Global south, historical/political, socioeconomic) Settings (workplace, community, HEI, profession, discipline, academic, school) Role perpsectives (Administrative, teacher, instructional designer, student, technologist, industry, professional body, et cetera)

A Framework and Model for Engagement in Open, Online Spaces

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Authors: Michelle Harrison, Thompson Rivers University Michael Paskevicius, University of Victoria Acknowledgement: Dr. Irwin DeVries, Dr. Tannis Morgan, and Tom Woodward were major contributors to this project and part of the design team.  Introduction This design case outlines the development of an open resource, including a software application and reflection framework tool, that explores open and critical approaches to learning and instructional design. Our team included four educators who teach and have learning design backgrounds. We started this project as we were questioning how the shift to more open approaches to education requires a change in epistemological and pedagogical practice. We noted that contemporary resources and educational tools continued to be based on traditional, systematic, and static approaches to knowledge that could not meet our design needs and pedagogical intentions. For example, the traditional textbook format, even when offered as an open educational resource, can lack the interactivity, agency, and accessibility […]

A scene from the case showing a masked woman on a stretcher being transported by two EMTs. There are two ambulances in the background.

Moving Towards Design Justice through Multivocal Design in Health Education

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Author: Dani Dilkes, Western University Collaborator: Dr. Courtney Casserly, Schulich School of Medicine and Dentistry, Western University In 2018, I slipped into the back of a lecture hall where a clinician was giving a lecture on Multiple Myeloma. I listened to a factual and detailed presentation of what Multiple Myeloma is (a blood cancer), how it presents, how it is treated, and the prognosis of patients. The presentation was full of statistics and diagrams of mutated cells. The lecturer was familiar to me, as she was one of my mother’s team of doctors, a very knowledgeable and not unkind physician.  But what she missed on that day was the visceral experience of finding out that a loved one has a disease that you had never heard of before and didn’t fully understand. The constant cycling between hope and hopeless of a barrage of experimental treatments. The exhaustion of living between […]

cropped section of infographic showing comparison of existing and new design of course components, including number and duration of videos.

Cultural Dimensions of Ethics in Design: Indigenous Knowledge & Online Course Media

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Author: Brian Lorraine, Simon Fraser University  What are the questions we might not be thinking to ask? In terms of cultural dimensions of ethics in design, many important considerations may be ‘hiding in plain sight’. As I continue to reflect on the issue of design ethics in relation to the handling of Indigenous Knowledge in recorded course media, the anxious feeling of uncertainty around what sort of protocol should be followed still persists. Moore (2021) explains that in the case of design situations, how design problems are framed correlates to the nature of possible solutions identified, and “thus directly impacts what problems designers address—or not” (para. 6). The struggle, though, in the context of higher education institutions fraught with inherent colonial structures and mindsets, is that we may not be well equipped to effectively problematize design ethics with regard to Indigenous cultural knowledges and practices. For example, dimensions of ethics […]