In his latest Journal of Responsibile Innovation (JRI) article Responsible innovation: ethics, safety and technology, some personal thoughts on the MOOC, Foreign Correspondent Jonathan Hankins describes the Delft University of Technology online course of the same name that he completed in 2016.

Hankins describes how the course develops in detail, from a background explanation of the technical organization of the course (video lectures), through the various contents and expectations and even including information regarding the work of other course participants and the geographic spread involved.

The opening section describes the course structure, arranged to run over a period of seven weeks with a different topic addressed each week. Around 1100 people participated in the course, with a brief breakdown of the geographic breakdown offered, before the lectures and topics are described in detail.

The problem of moral overload is presented by Jeroen van den Hoven, a name many readers will know as he is well known within the field of RI, before further lectures address balancing risk, safety and cost, quantitative methodologies and mathematical modeling, innovation management and the economic determinants of innovation, before closing with a series of lectures related to designing for values and trust, and presence in design.

Hankins explains how each week concludes with a multiple choice test and two 500 word essays are expected for submission over this seven week period, offering insight into the peer review process and work submitted by other participants.

The second section of the article offers a personal perspective as Hankins describes the experience of completing the course from his own perspective, offering his views on the organization as well as the content offered.

Through the author licensing agreement with the Journal publishers, the Bassetti Foundation is pleased to offer the first fifty readers that apply free access to this article. The article can be downloaded here, on a first come first served basis.

Readers might also be interested in reading Hankins’ previous publications in the JRI.

In 2014 Hankins published Notes from the S.NET Conference, a description of the proceedings of the S.NET (Society for the Study of Nanoscience and Emerging Technologies) conference held in Boston Massachusetts in 2013.

This article depicts the conference proceedings through the categories of technocratic and societal approaches to addressing the issues of RI, before concluding with some questions on the involvement of participatory approaches and an overview of general thoughts. Once more the Foundation and the publishers Taylor and Francis are pleased to offer 50 downloads for the first interested readers.

In 2015 Hankins also published a review of Innovation and Responsibility: Engaging with New and Emerging Technologies, an edited volume of papers based upon presentations given at the S.NET meeting described above.

In the conclusion Hankins states that the book offers a good place for further development of previous arguments at an academic level, while also offering the reader very interesting alternative perspectives from both within the decision-making process and outside. It demonstrates the broad base and thinking of the S.NET community while offering a showcase of timely debate for researchers in many fields and at many levels to publish, and sits nicely in a series that is very much a driver in the RI debate. Once again 50 copies of the review are available for free download here.

As ever the Bassetti Foundation would like to recommend the Journal to all of our readers, and is honoured and privileged to contribute to such a quality publication.

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