Bonjour à tous,
I'd like to thank Gabriele for this extremely interesting question. I hope that everyone will feel ok to answer openly on this list. It seems important to me that we come up with a picture of the « best practices » or even some sort of common set of norms to guide our dealing with private or public organizations we partner with in our educational workshops.
The question seems manyfold, though. It concerns academic (research and teaching) freedom and intellectual property rights. I would say that it also concerns the right of apprentices to be treated like adults and to not be spare of the most difficult dilemmas they might have to face during their future professional activities. In a way, I would advocate that we exercice very minimal censorship over the subject matters that are introduced in our workshops by our partners. To me, there is no better way to foster sound aptitude for practical reasoning among students. A clause of the kind « without obligation of results » (well, that is at least the literal translation from the French « sans obligation de résultats » I normally use) you mentioned is paramount to guarantee fundamental learning objectives.
The other clause I have been contemplating with lately is the use of a creative commons license of the kind BY-NC for everything that could come out of our workshops. My problem is that such licenses contravene with my own institution's rules with regards to intellectual and commercial property rights.
But your question encompasses issues that extend far beyond the mere activities of an educational workshop. It concerns the way a large number of higher education institutions have been responding to the draining of public money and forced into entering a race to secure their budget through private corporations and philanthropy. Debates about the decarbonization of higher institutions fundings are just the tip of the iceberg of this issue. In 2012, York University declined a $30M donation because of concerns over the power that would then be vested to the doner. Can educational workshops in design offer a workspace to prototype new forms of partnerships between higher education and private corporations ?
My two cents ! Best !
PG
Gabriele Ferri a écrit le 04/02/20 à 07:34 :
Dear all,
I'm looking for best-practices, examples and references pertaining ethical
guidelines to follow when soliciting "real-world assignments" from private
companies to give to design students.
A bit of background: I co-coordinate a M.Sc. program in design
www.masterdigitaldesign.com<http://www.masterdigitaldesign.com> at the Amsterdam university of applied
sciences. Our curriculum is multidisciplinary, and spans roughly from
screen-based UX to smart objects. What's pertinent here is that, as part of
the studio practice that we require in our curriculum, student teams must
work on three "client projects" from external entities, e.g., small and big
industries, public bodies, NGOs... Many of these "clients" (I'm using the
quotes here on purpose) pay a monetary contribution to the program, which
is invested in facilities and equipment for the students. The quotes around
"client" are there because it's understood that students have a right to
fail in this assignment, and it's understood that the brief should be
exploratory in its nature (e.g., we don't accept busywork that a company
would give to juniors & interns).
This is a model that we're quite satisfied with..............until a very
controversial potential client pitched a brief that sparked a long
discussion.
I will not name the potential client, it's a very big and very rich
multinational, whose main product is quite controversial currently.
This client would have been disposed to pay a sum that was not small at all
for our budget (but tiny, for them), to have a student team working on a
concept product that is alternative to their controversial main product.
This brief was refused after a long discussion.
Part of the heat in the debate is that arguments like "I don't trust this
corporation" or "I don't feel comfortable having students work in XYZ
problem space" are, in some form, subjective ethical judgments.
Learning from all this, we decided to draft a Code of Ethics of sorts, to
have a basis and a benchmark for similar future discussions.
I can imagine that many design programs out there who cooperate closely
with industries face similar issues. How do you address them?
I can understand that some answer might be confidential, please feel free
also to write me in private (WATCH OUT: many email client send responses to
the whole mailing list by default if you click "reply" here)
thanks
G:
Gabriele Ferri, Ph.D.
Tenured lecturer & researcher // M.Sc. Digital Design // Play & Civic Media
Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences
www.gabrieleferri.com<http://www.gabrieleferri.com>
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Philippe Gauthier, D. Sociologie
Professeur agrégé
Directeur, groupe design ∩ société
gds.umontreal.ca<http://gds.umontreal.ca>
Université de Montréal
École de design
Faculté de l'aménagement
Case Postale 6128, succursale Centre-Ville
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