Developing a Professional Profile of a Digital Ethics Officer in an Educational Technology Unit in Higher Education

Abstract

The digitalisation of learning, teaching, and study processes has a major impact on possible evaluations and uses of data, for example with regard to individual learning recommendations, prognosis, or assessments. This also gives rise to ethical issues centered around digital teaching and possible challenges of data use. One possible approach to this challenge might be to install a Digital Ethics Officer (DEO), whose future profile this paper outlines for a Educational Technology unit of a Higher Education Institution (HEI). Therefore, an introductory overview of the tasks and roles of Ethics Officers (EO) is given based on the literature. The authors then describe the current ethics program of a university of technology and collect current and potential ethical issues from the field of educational technologies. Based on this, a first professional profile for a DEO at an educational technology unit of a university is described. From the authors’ point of view, the article thus prepares important considerations and steps for the future of this position.