The agile ethics process: An oxymoron or a new paradigm in education?

Abstract

Project-based innovation and entrepreneurship curricula encourage learners to approach challenges in an agile, iterative way, allowing for flexibility to respond to new information throughout the research and idea development process. This approach often clashes with traditional ethical approval processes designed for a more predictable set of research methods. This account of practice explores the tensions thus arising and asks how the ethics review process might better support the development of future ethical, responsible innovators? Three key insights related to the importance of balance, language and shared understanding are introduced and presented as part of a pilot project.

Keywords

Agile ethics design education engaged learning ethics innovation procedural ethics

Procedural ethics play an important role in protecting the reputation, rights, dignity, health, safety, privacy and freedom for the university, researchers, research participants and the environment. Higher education institutions, especially those that are research-intensive such as the University of Bristol in the UK, have robust policies and procedures in place to ensure that these protections are upheld (University of Bristol, 2019). With a growing interest in engaged and authentic learning projects in the classroom, design and entrepreneurship educators are facing the challenge of translating traditional research ethics into student projects. In undertaking these projects, educators must navigate a set of policies and procedures – often not fit for purpose – while supporting students in developing a sense of ethical conduct, teaching discipline-specific theories, tools and methods, collaborating with external partners and balancing the workload for themselves and their students.

This account of practice is an enquiry into understanding and evolving a new approach to procedural ethics and explores the tensions arising between traditional research ethics processes and student projects. It addresses the question of how the ethics review process might better support the development of ethical, responsible innovators for the future? The focus is on procedural ethics, as they tend to be a driver for wider discussions about ethics as they relate to the curriculum.

Key findings include the need for balance between procedural ethics and ethical conduct, the importance of language and the value of navigating ethical discussions with a shared understanding of the agile approach. These findings have been implemented in a pilot project run at the University of Bristol’s Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (the Centre). Early results have shown that integrating research planning, method selection and ethics approval processes promotes a healthier balance between procedural ethics and the development of ethical practice through engaged learning projects.

Methods and analysis

This investigation was developed through ‘living life as inquiry’, which Marshall defines as ‘living continually in the process, adjusting, seeing what emerges and bringing things into question’ (Marshall, 1999: 156–157). This approach was adopted in my attempt to seek a range of perspectives, treating little as fixed or defined and embracing the fluidity of change. It is also consistent with the view that, as the author of my own practice, I shape the patterns and stories that are shared (Marshall, 1999: 157). Various activities were used in its application: my own lived experience teaching on the units and supporting students through the ethical approval process and onward in their projects; prototyping and testing new interventions to support this teaching; conversations, both facilitated and casual, with colleagues; and attendance at a public lecture on ethics in participatory research. A three-question survey was also used to explore how the early approach to ethics impacted the students’ learning experience. The survey was sent to 55 undergraduate students in the Client-Led Briefs unit, and 12 responses were received. Desk-based research was used to extend knowledge and discover additional perspectives. Desktop research spanned ethics in education (Brydon-Miller and Greenwood, 2006; Guillemin and Gillam, 2004), engineering (Newberry, 2004), nursing (Doane, 2002), social work and social science (Banks, 2016; Banks et al., 2013) and business education/training (Solberg et al., 1995, Gentile, 2016; Soltes, 2017).

Ethics within the centre

Engaged learning projects are at the core of the Centre’s innovation programmes, which bring together students from 14 different disciplines – from physics to psychology to computer science – to study innovation and entrepreneurship under one roof. In the first term of the 2019/20 academic year, the Centre had 89 different student teams across three cohorts undertaking a variety of engaged learning projects that would require them to get out of the classroom and talk with clients, partners, community members, customers or end users.

Throughout the 4-year undergraduate and 1-year postgraduate innovation programmes, projects are designed to foster interactions with others, both inside and outside the Centre, early and often. Students actively explore a variety of methods for understanding people and perspectives, including interviewing, observation, rapid prototyping and testing. Design Thinking, a method and mindset for solving problems and creating innovations, underpins the curriculum. Key theories of agile are also introduced to support students in developing ‘robust and flexible methods of working in an iterative, agile and responsive manner’ (University of Bristol, 2017). The aim is to encourage an agile and flexible approach to project-based work that is focused on understanding and designing with and for others. With a high level of engagement outside the classroom, and the many ethical implications that entails, the Centre faces a paradox concerning the coexistence of rigorous ethics policies and procedures in a learning environment that teaches agility and flexibility.

The Client-Led Briefs units run at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels are an example of engaged learning at the Centre, giving students the opportunity to tackle real project briefs from clients in various industries. By embracing self-directed and collaborative learning, the units give students a high level of autonomy as they work with the client to plan and implement the project. For undergraduates, the unit makes up 20 credits in the second year and is spread over two teaching blocks; 8–10 client briefs are active across the year with each team of students working directly with one client each term. The postgraduate unit runs in the second teaching block for a total of 20 credits; each student team works directly with one of two clients who have provided briefs for the unit.

Prerequisite units cover ethics policies and procedures at an academic level; encourage students to explore the role and meaning of ethical research conduct, responsibility and professionalism within their small project team; and lay the foundation for how to interact with and build empathy for users. Procedural ethics become more explicit in the Client-Led Briefs units as project teams are required to gain ethics approval before beginning primary research.

In early 2018, the Centre adopted the supervisory ethics approval process outlined by the university’s Faculty Research Ethics Committee (FREC). The process, originally designed for third-year undergraduate dissertation projects, allows supervisors to directly approve ethics applications for projects that are considered low-risk. Higher-risk projects are still sent to FREC – projects such as those working with people who are particularly vulnerable or unable to give informed consent or those involving the National Health Service (NHS). Under this process, students complete a standard form at the beginning of a project and send it to the supervisor to review.

Ethics in industry and academia

I joined the Centre team in 2016 with an industry background in consulting, a role that I continue at present. In this non-academic role, I use the same methods as those taught in the Centre for understanding people and perspectives. I have found that in industry ethics are often implicit: in place of forms and committees, it is about doing what is right for the client, community and other project stakeholders. Operating ethically is linked to professionalism, reputation and the ability to gain and retain clients. The values of the organisation one is working with often support this – for example, brutal honesty, which includes ‘live[ing] ethically and tell[ing] the truth’ and responsibility to ‘deliver on your promises, do the right thing, and own your mistakes’ (BDC, n.d.). Often, when conducting research, the client and at least one other person on the team reviews the plan. Information sheets and consent forms are used, especially when any video or audio recording is involved. Equally, an agreement by email to sit down for an interview may be considered consent, and an explanation of the project is part of making the research participant feel comfortable about what they are participating in and how their data will be used.

In contrast to this industry experience of navigating research by ‘what’s right’, in higher education it seems that the term ‘ethics’ tends to trigger a procedural response that generates forms, deadlines, lengthy documents and discussions about what one can and cannot do. ‘Ethics’ thus often feels like a checkbox exercise, presenting roadblocks more than an opportunity for progress.

Ethics in the literature and the student experience

If students walk away from the learning experience with the idea that ethics is only about procedure, we are missing out on a major opportunity to truly support the ethical, responsible innovators of the future. Many of the ethical dilemmas one may encounter in developing a project and working in the field are difficult, if not impossible, to anticipate on an ethics application (Brydon-Miller, 2018). The conversation about ethics in the classroom must have a broader scope than forms and applications.

Guillemin and Gillam (2004) suggest that ethics fall into two categories: procedural ethics, related to ethics approvals by relevant committees, and ethics in practice, related to the everyday ethical issues that arise when undertaking research. Similarly, Banks (2016) discusses everyday ethics and textbook ethics, indicating a divide between lived ethics embedded in daily practice and a by-the-book approach. Newberry (2004) breaks this down further into three categories: emotional engagement is the desire to actively care about ethics and to address issues in an ethical way; intellectual engagement is an understanding of the principles and moral reasoning underpinning ethics and the development of strategies to navigate them; and particular knowledge relates to ethics codes, guidelines and precedents.

With multiple dimensions of ethics at play, tensions arise between procedure and practice, especially in qualitative research. While these tensions are often revealed in references to the procedure as a ‘formality’ or a ‘hurdle’, Guillemin and Gillam argue that the ethics committee process serves to enhance ethics in practice (2004: 269). The process sparks the researcher(s) to consider the various ethical dimensions of what they are about to undertake and to think through appropriate responses to potential issues (pp. 269, 273).

By exploring the various dimensions of ethics, we come to realise the importance of a balanced approach when considering what agile ethics may look like. On one hand, the process needs to be responsive and adaptable; on the other, the experience needs to imbue a sense of emotional and intellectual engagement so that students want to make ethical decisions and know how to make them (Newberry, 2004).

By taking a procedural approach to ethics, what Soltes (2017) calls consequential decisions are being identified. The ethics forms are helping to outline a clear scenario in which a choice of right or wrong should be made. In some cases, such as offering widely accepted guidelines about data protection, this clear definition of right and wrong is extremely helpful in the learning process. For example, in the survey one student commented:

The positive about ethics is that it made [me] more aware of the process of collecting, using and storing data…It made me also more aware of the implications involved in collecting other people’s data.

In the Centre, the process of ethics approvals has also sparked deeper student engagement with the project and the people involved. When asked in what way ethics had a positive impact on the project, one student said:

We considered our role as researchers by thinking about it from the participant point of view.

Others said that it helped them to ‘better understand the brief through reiterating to ourselves what needs to be done’ and to ‘shape our interview questions’.

The tensions of time and bureaucracy were also apparent in every student response. For example:

Ethics can mean more red tape. The Centre’s resources are limited, so turnaround for feedback can end up taking a long time, especially in a complicated ethics situation that requires many interactions.

Unfortunately, in some cases the approval procedures appear to have undermined the value of an agile approach to research. As one student noted about the ethics application:

Doing it early on maximises the time available to you, but it’s hard to know what you should be asking at an early stage. In a way, the extra effort required makes doing research less appealing/accessible.

Brydon-Miller and Greenwood (2006) have experienced similar tensions in the ethics review process to those felt among both students and lecturers at the Centre. They describe their work in Action Research as ‘open-ended, collaborative, methodologically eclectic, and without specific methods, processes, or final goals determined in advance’ (Brydon-Miller and Greenwood, 2006: 119). This is an approach to research that clashes with the conventional positivistic research approach of set hypotheses, methods and expected outcomes for which the ethics reviews were built (Brydon-Miller and Greenwood, 2006: 119).

Engaged learning projects require an array of decisions, large and small, that will have ethical implications – the ethics approval process is only the first step. This means that our students must also have the ability to navigate ethically important moments, those ‘difficult, often subtle, and usually unpredictable situations that arise in the practice of doing research’ (Guillemin and Gillam, 2004: 262).

In the student survey, comments about ethically important moments that occurred in project work were distinctly absent from the open-ended responses. This may be due to the nature of the survey, or it may suggest a narrow view of what constitutes a decision with ethical implications – that is, that the students saw ‘ethics’ as a form they completed at the beginning of the project rather than a guide for ethical decision making. This was implied by one student, who said:

It was challenging for our brief, given we were not allowed to go to schools, and working ways to still conduct research with children has been difficult.

If ethics is perceived as only about a form, we must find new ways to support students in identifying and navigating ethically important moments. We must help them ‘come to know themselves as ethical agents’ (Doane, 2002: 524).

Considerations for moving towards agile ethics

This enquiry led to three key insights that have furthered the Centre’s approach to ethics in engaged learning projects: i) finding balance and multidimensionality in our approach; ii) the importance of the language used to discuss ethics; and iii) a need to define more clearly the type of research used in order to be better positioned for change.

Finding balance and multidimensionality

The obvious occurrence of tensions among the different dimensions of ethics in professional practice speaks to the need for a multidimensional approach to ethics in the classroom. Early conversations in the Centre have often fallen into the category of procedural ethics, emphasising the procedure over the everyday nature of ethical practice. However, there needs to be balance; the process cannot be isolated from the practice. There has been an understanding that an emotional and intellectual engagement with ethics is being taught in other units, but an everyday ethics approach (Banks, 2016; Banks et al., 2013) does not work in silos. If we want to help students see themselves as ethical agents (Doane 2002: 524), we must support them in evaluating their roles and ethical responsibilities beyond the ethics application form. How might we build ethics into the experience with the client project?

The importance of language

One small step towards striking this balance between procedural ethics and ethical research conduct is to consider the communication and language used in relation to ethics. Early on, I often caught myself asking student teams, ‘Have you done your ethics?’ or asking a colleague for a recommendation, ‘Do we need to do ethics for this?’ This language communicates a very narrow framing that ‘ethics’ equals process and hurdles. It suggests a one-and-done activity that neglects the emotional and intellectual engagement necessary for everyday ethics to be applied in the field. How might we reframe the use of the term ‘ethics’ in a way that is grounded in the students’ every day lived experience such as Doane (2002) suggests?

A clearer definition of the type of research

By better defining and communicating the type of research used in student projects, we have an opportunity to be better positioned for change. Brydon-Miller and Greenwood (2006) and Banks et al. (2013) have cited challenges similar to those faced in the Client-Led Briefs units, namely the incompatibility of traditional ethics reviews and the collaborative, unpredictable nature of their research. Brydon-Miller and Greenwood (2006: 120) have cited positive progress in this area when working with the Institutional Review Board (IRB) to build common understanding of what action research is and the challenges of matching it to the current IRB processes. However, before we can become advocates for change in the ethics review process, we will need to build a common understanding internally about the type of research we are advocating at each level of the programme. Currently, we speak in terms of design research, which can mean many things to many people and may include anything from participatory design to forms of business validation and market exploration. How might we define the research we are advocating for in order to help build a shared understanding both internally and externally?

Piloting a new approach

Since the initial inquiry was done in 2018, the insights gained have fuelled a new approach in the Centre. The updated approach integrates research planning, ethical approvals and method selection, striking a better balance between practice and procedure while encouraging a deeper understanding of each method before taking it out into the field. Additionally, the collaborative nature of this approach serves as a form of formative feedback on the project, helping to streamline supervision tasks.

A pilot of the new approach ran in the first term of 2019/20 with a postgraduate cohort of 14 students. One aim of the pilot was to make a conscious shift in the vocabulary used across the Centre; the language was changed from ‘ethics form’ to ‘Research Diary’. Students are no longer asked questions such as ‘Have you finished your ethics?’ Instead, they might hear ‘Is your Research Diary ready for me to take a look at?’

Another aim was to make Research Diaries living documents integrated into the student project. The pilot included three key changes:

The layout and content of the form were updated so that it seemed less like a one-and-done submission and more like a diary documenting the planning process. It is now divided into two parts. Part A asks students to frame the project at a high level and consider the approach or lens which will be used to guide their project; it also covers specific ethical implications for the project as a whole. Part B details each method that will be used. This allows students to demonstrate their knowledge of the method and challenges them to explore method-specific ethical considerations.

The completion and submission process was redesigned to allow for a greater level of collaboration. A shared folder structure, accessible to both the student team and the lecturers, allowed for live commenting and collaboration.

Enabled by the first two changes, new methods (Part B of the Research Diary) could be added one-by-one and sent for review at any time, further supporting the agile and iterative nature of the projects.

By the second term of 2019/20, word had spread within the Centre and supervisors of three additional units deployed the Research Diary. The process was updated to include a change log – a simple shared document through which supervisors record the feedback and approval status of each method. This helps them keep track of team progress and improves collaboration on units with multiple supervisors. Research Diaries were rolled out Centre-wide in the 2020/21 academic year. With the shift to blended learning, Research Diaries have been embedded in the Microsoft Teams space set up for each unit, furthering the idea of living project documentation. At the postgraduate level, unit directors additionally complete a unit-level ethics application that is reviewed by FREC.

Conclusions and next steps

Ongoing development of the Research Diary approach has been largely based on anecdotal evidence from supervisors reporting that it offers a significant step towards process improvement and better suits the agile nature of the projects. In my own teaching, I have seen mid-project supervision session discussions come full circle as new methods are added to the Research Diary and implemented in the projects. The Research Diary has also been valuable as a tool for providing formative feedback about how teams are approaching a project. Supervisors collect informal feedback from students through the process of introducing and reviewing the Diaries. One of the next steps is to collect formal feedback from students to further evaluate progress from the student point of view, comparing it to the results of the original survey.

Driven by lessons learned from the Research Diary pilot, a second phase of the project is underway exploring how to further embed responsible innovation. The aim is to identify key moments in the learning journey and design small but impactful interventions that will be built as pillars into the curriculum. For example, in reviewing Part A of the Research Diary, which outlines the approach or lens used, supervisors have identified a need to build a stronger understanding of positionality earlier in the programme. A curriculum review is underway to identify where and when this can most effectively be introduced.

In some ways, getting to this point has brought about more questions and fewer answers – evidence of the living life as inquiry approach where little is ‘fixed, finished or clear-cut’ (Marshall, 1999). However, it has also brought about significant progress. By bringing together the ethics review process with a thoughtfully designed thread of responsible innovation through the curriculum, we are on our way to answering the original question: how might the ethics review process better support the development of ethical, responsible innovators of the future?

Footnotes

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Ann Padley

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