Digital Responsibility Education and Training

Focusing on the ethical challenges of widespread digitalization, DIRECT intends to fulfil the pressing need for a scientifically sound and practically proven approach for systematic upskilling in the domain of Digital Responsibility.

Situation

Digital Responsibility (DR) is a recently emerged concept that highlights the values, norms and principles that guide organizations and individuals in the ethical design, development, implementation, and use of digital technologies. Independent of specific technologies, digitalization creates a multitude of ethical challenges, for both individuals but also private and public organizations. Failure to recognize and proactively address these ethical challenges will lead to undesirable outcomes that negatively impact our society. While some of these outcomes may be intentionally driven by malicious actors, a large share of ethical issues tend to be unintentional consequences of generally well-meaning digitalization efforts, driven by a lack of knowledge and education on the responsible use of technology. Moreover, lack of DR competence can also lead to increased uncertainty for innovators and entrepreneurs, which in turn may negatively impact European competitiveness.Instead of implementing restrictions and laws that can hardly be enforced, and may stifle innovation, DIRECT aims to drive DR through knowledge development and training. Educating the designers and developers as well as the individuals about responsible conduct with technology will not only help to create awareness for and improve the ethical dimension of digitalization, but also act as a catalyst for sustainable and responsible innovation and entrepreneurship with new technologies.

Course of action

Starting with the development of a comprehensive DR competence framework, based on and including tangible ethical dilemmas from various contexts, DIRECT will develop DR learning pathways based on innovative pedagogies, as well as a skills analytics engine to support individualized DR upskilling. Through the development of a DR learning platform, DIRECT will ensure ease-of-use and broad adoption of DR competences. Taken together, DIRECT will provide the conceptual and technical baseline for a multitude of follow-up activities to promote the responsible use of digital technologies for the greater good.

Contact

Prof. Dr. Nikolaus Obwegeser

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• +41 31 848 41 61
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This project contributes to the following SDGs

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