DE7049 - Responsible Design Innovation Studio

In this module you will help create a student-led studio as you take on a major piece of Responsible Design Innovation practice-based research. You will have the freedom to create stakeholder events and workshops to engage your peers, the wider responsible innovation community of practice (which includes all your tutors and collaborators from across the year), and new collaborators to contribute to your enquiry.

During this module you will have a project supervisor who will meet with you on a weekly basis to discuss the progress of your work, help challenge and guide your progress and deepen your understanding and sensitivity to issues. In addition to your supervisor, you will be able to get feedback from the programme’s academic team during scheduled open studio mornings. This module requires you to co-produce a project report, providing an opportunity to further your learning about and to demonstrate effective group working and collaborative production.

This 60-credit module covers a 15-week period. Academic supervision and feedback are available across the first 8 weeks. In week 9, there will be a formal review of your project progress and your plan to completion. This review will give you both feedback on your project progress and your module learning outcomes. In the final part of the module, you will complete your project activities and co-produce your final report.

You will be provided with a module guide at the start of this module. This guide will provide all the important information about the module. It will describe the module’s learning outcomes and how these relate to the programme’s overall learning outcomes. It will provide a detailed schedule for your teaching and learning and describe how your learning will be assessed. These details will be explained in a module briefing where you will have the opportunity to ask questions. Design challenges will include briefings from partner organisations.

Your main contact for the module will be your project supervisor. They will arrange in-person meetings with you, usually within the studio space and you will be able to contact them using an agreed platform. A digital space will be created where you can upload ongoing work. Each supervisor will look after a peer groups and will use the studio and an online space to encourage creative and supportive collaboration and feedback.

All modules at Northumbria include a range of reading materials that students are expected to engage with. The reading list for this module can be found at: http://readinglists.northumbria.ac.uk
(Reading List service online guide for academic staff this containing contact details for the Reading List team – http://library.northumbria.ac.uk/readinglists)

Knowledge & Understanding:
• Construct a theoretical framework to support context specific responsible design innovation.
• Contribute new understandings about responsible innovation and its contexts through critical review of your innovation practice.

Intellectual / Professional skills & abilities:
• Present the process and findings having conducted independent practice-based design research seeking to address difficulties and establish fairer futures.
• Develop networks and mutually beneficial relationships with different stakeholders through dialogue and collaborative practices.

Personal Values Attributes (Global / Cultural awareness, Ethics, Curiosity) (PVA):
• Act ethically with care and sensitivity in the development of a significant piece of responsible design innovation practice.

Formative assessment will be provided through weekly contact with peers and tutors, and through in-depth project review and debriefing sessions.

Summative assessment Part A (50%) will review a 6000-word research project report co-produced by the project team. The visual and professionally created report will present the theoretical foundations and contextual factors important for the work. The report will communicate your research practice, process and outputs concluding with an articulation of how the work contributes to specific communities.

Summative assessment Part B (50%) will review a 2000-word individual critical appraisal of your responsible innovation practice. This appraisal should be grounded in literature and articulate how your work contributes to understandings of responsible innovation.

Written summative feedback will be provided to highlight the strengths of your assignment submission and its areas of improvement. This feedback will make clear how you performed against the assessment criteria. All MLOs will be assessed through your research report and critical appraisal.

N/A

N/A

Embrace responsible design. Uphold the principles of sustainability and ethics in every decision. Drive transformation. Challenge the status quo when it fails to be inclusive or sustainable. We encourage you to take the reins. We urge you to be the catalyst for responsible innovation. Rooted in an ethos of care and commitment to do no harm, we inspire you to harness the power of design to forge the progressive path you envision.

In response to one or more external partner projects, this studio provides you with a platform to showcase your integrated knowledge, skills and practices. With your teammates and project partners you will create and apply your very own hybrid methodology focused on respectful, just and sustainable innovation.

This future-focused, real-world studio is designed to enable you to act as a co-researcher developing new knowledge and understanding across three domains - the topic of the partner project; practices of responsible design; and you as a practitioner, all assessed through the production of a portfolio of practice.