This course teaches students the essential elements of a Value-based Engineering for sustainable, accountable and responsible IT system design. Value-based Engineering is a Requirements' engineering and IT Innovation approach, which helps built systems in an  “Ethics-by-Design” manner.

Due to the combination of moral philosophy, discourse ethics, particaptory design, value sensitive design and risk-based design the course allows students to to understand the social implications of timely IT Innovations. They gain an understanding of the true human challenges arising from IT designs for direct as well as indirect stakeholders.

Value-based Engineering as taught in this course introduces students to formulate an ethically aligned value strategy for IT infrastructure. Concrete approaches for the identification of technical and organizational system design requirements are presented and applied in class in the form of running, group-based, case-study exercises.

The goal of the course as a whole is to give students a first theoretical as well as practical grasp of what it would mean to become a 'Value Lead' for IT companies or what is now also called an "Ethical AI Advisor". 

The course is accompanied by the textbook "Value-based Engineering" https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783110793383/html

• system requirements engineering through stakeholder value understanding
• an insight into ethical, value-based technology innovation and system requirements analysis
• an understanding of human and social values and their ontology
• the skill to explore stakeholder values with the help of moral philosophy
• the ability to derive a proper value proposition for an IT innovation
• the know-how to translate value principles into IT system requirements or concrete design features
• some modeling tools to support value-based engineering
• enhancement of linguistic ability

The course combines theoretical input with application-oriented exercises. In each session, key elements or process steps of the Value-based Engineering analysis are introduced and then worked on together in small groups or in plenary discussions. Learning progress is supported by weekly short quizzes, which take place at the beginning of each session and assess understanding of the content from the previous session.

From the third session onward, students work in small groups to present a selected core value, illustrated through a suitable real-world use case. The aim of these peer contributions is to foster a deeper understanding of central ethical values, as well as their relevance and concrete manifestations in societal and technological contexts.

The course concludes with a written exam in which the covered material is reflected upon and applied.

30% Weekly quizzes

25% Group presentation

45% Exam

Grading Scheme:

• 100% - 90% = excellent (1)
• 89% - 80% = good (2)
• 79% - 70% = satisfactory (3)
• 69% - 60% = sufficient (4)
• <59% = insufficient (5)

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