This transdisciplinary course teaches students the essential elements of a Value-based Engineering for sustainable IT system design.  Value-based Engineering is a an “Ethics-by-Design” methodology allowing companies to understand the social implications of their IT operations and to pin down the true human challenges arising from their business for direct as well as indirect stakeholders.

Value-based Engineering as taught in this course helps companies’ innovation and engineering teams to formulate an ethically aligned value strategy for their business as well as their IT infrastructure. Concrete approaches for the identification of technical and organizational system design requirements are presented and applied in class in the form of a case-study exercise and homework.

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 an innovation ‘value-expert’ for IT-driven companies.  In this vein, the course sets the scene by teaching students first about the wider context of Value-based Engineering in today’s innovation management landscape. Equally it provides them with an insight into the philosophical underpinnings of value-theory and moral philosophy as far as this is relevant for the professional engagement in Value-based Engineering.

After attending this course, students will:

•    know what innovations are and what challenges accompany their success

•    know about how innovations are successfully managed in firms

•    know how to reflect on the ethical dimensions of IT innovations

•    know about how open innovation tools and user innovation can be leveraged for innovation management

•    have an insight into the factors drive and impede dominant IT designs

In addition, this course fosters the following soft skills:

•    conceptual thinking

•    value-based thinking

full attendance is required

Mixture of lectures and homework based practice.

Admission to the master’s programme in Information Systems is required.

Qualified exchange students are explicitly invited to this course which benefits from a diverse and international atmosphere.

This course is organized in a flip-teaching format. This means that students are required to watch the video material of the respective lecture before they come to class. Alternatively, they can also listen to the audio-stream of the material. Listening to the audio is possible, because there are hardly any power-point slides used in this course. Instead, the lecture’s content is given to the students in text/script-form containing the exact same material as what is presented in the lecture cast. The few pictures and models accompanying this content are re-printed in the lecture script. So it is also possible for students to read the script. Students should be choosing that format, which is the most efficient and easy for them to comprehend and remember the content. The format and preparatory material allows students to exactly recapitulate the content of the course and re-read as they need it for their own progress and pace. The script in particular hints students to additional journal- and press articles as well as good books that they can use to dig deeper into what they learn/hear about. Some of these sources are explicitly highlighted and underlined in the script material. Both the lecture script/text material as well as these additional highlighted sources are relevant knowledge for the final exam, which counts 50% of the grade. 

After getting acquainted with the lecture material, all students are individually requested to send Prof. Spiekermann’s tutor Matthäus Bulgarini (matthaeus.bulgarini@wu.ac.at ) 

one question they might have on the content. The question could be one of comprehension of the material OR a general question on the material. The question should be brief and sent in via e-mail 48 hours before the next lecture starts. The quality, sense, timeliness and submission of the questions count 10% of the grade. Question submission is required for all lectures except for lecture 1 and 6.

When students come to class the entire three hours will be dedicated to the students’ questions, joint discussion of the material and some practical exercises. 10% of the final grade will be attributed to students’ active participation in these lecture discussions and group works. They will be called upon individually to demonstrate their understanding and weekly preparation.

On Wednesday April 7^th 2021 students will receive a homework exercise that they will need to complete by themselves and submit to Learn@WU until Sunday April 11^th 2021. This homework counts 30% of their grade.

The overall format implies that students are required to physically and mentally attend the lectures with their cameras’ switched on.

At the of the course students need to pass a written exam, which counts 50% of the final grade.