How can we ensure that the values of AI are aligned with our own? What ethical principles should we program AI with? How can we ensure that it benefits our lives? And what effects will it have on our lives, both in the workplace and in the home?
"The entire content of the course is fantastic, stimulating and exciting. There is nothing I would change about the content."
"The professor has been one of the most interesting and engaging teachers I have had so far. All lectures, despite being online, have felt like a proper discussion between lecturer and other students."
This module has three key elements:
You'll learn how to examine one topic from a variety of angles, thinking about how issues from one area (e.g., computer science) can alter and affect issues from other areas (e.g., politics or art).
This module explores the use and abuse of numbers, and other forms of data, in communications through data-driven storytelling.
The module is built around the four main themes of data-driven storytelling: context, data, narrative and design. Through these themes we investigate areas such as language, colour, numbers, emotion and bias and how they influence data-driven storytelling.
"I feel very good about the skills I’ve built in this course. I can look at a data story and see the different elements to it rather than just take the creator’s word on it."
"My understanding of how to communicate an idea has been increased by this module, since it has taught me that the way you present information is as important if not more so than the information being communicated."
This module has three key elements:
This module explores the skills required to teach, and what it means to teach and to learn.
We draw on several disciplines to unpick our understanding of the role that humans and technology can play in human learning.
"I thought the content was really interesting. It made me think of new teaching ideas and new concepts which can be linked to education."
"Lots of helpful resources, I really like the content of the lectures and the timing of them. They are not too short or too long, which keeps me more stimulated and [I] can concentrate longer"
The module has three key elements:
Animals are generally considered to be beings that are sentient, but they also contribute to the world's economy. How can we balance these two ideas?
Why do we recognise animals as sentient beings? How do the relationships we develop with animals impact their treatment?
How do animals contribute to the economy? How do we recognise the rights of animals and the rights of animal owners and what actions can we take to support this?
How has human intervention impacted on ecosystems? How can individuals influence change with respect to how animals are viewed and used?
These questions will all be explored in this module.
The module has three key elements:
These skills will not only be of value in the rest of your studies, but are also invaluable for employment. You'll consider the impact of other disciplines as well as your own to prepare you for the workplace.
In a world so full of pressures and distractions, it can be difficult to feel a strong connection to the natural environment around us.
This module gives you the opportunity to develop your creative writing and journalling techniques as a way of actively exploring and documenting your relationship to nature, and to consider how such engagement can make a difference to our own psychological health, as well as to the future of the planet.
The body of work you create will expressively communicate your values, ideas and personal perspective while developing key interdisciplinary skills, as well as broadening your awareness of edgelands and other less well-known aspects of the environment.
The module has three key elements:
This problem-solving module provides guidance, support and information to equip you to face current environmental challenges through science-based approaches, legal mechanisms, governmental and economic policies both at national, European and international level.
We'll assess current and future environmental policies alongside environmental problems such as biodiversity loss, water security, climate change and food production, and consider the significant challenges they pose, which admit scientific, economic and administrative responses as readily as legal ones.
Throughout the module, you'll plan and design environmental solutions for stakeholders as part of a ‘live brief’. You'll be part of a collaboration of academics and professionals to look at environmental law, the sharing of different approaches and new ways of thinking about environmental problems, balancing alternative interpretations and conflicting interests and generating new solutions.
By collaborating, you'll build your employability and develop new knowledge on sustainability and understanding of the multiplicity of perspectives from which environmental choices can be addressed.
Sustainability in this context is broadly interpreted as achieving resilience and sustainable relationships between actors to improve the human condition and the natural environment.
The module has two key elements:
This module will also:
This module asks, ‘how can we anticipate potential, unintended consequences of introducing new technologies on different groups or individuals?’.
To do this, we'll investigate current and emerging scenarios of technology transformation and its wider impact on society from a socio-economic and ethical-legal perspective.
We'll then apply practical techniques to consider how information technologies could be used in new, near-future situations and anticipate their potential impact in a fictional world.
"Lectures were perfectly organised, run smoothly and clear."
This module has three key elements:
This module explores the wide-ranging impact that pandemics have on our global communities.
The module has two key elements:
In this module we'll explore how your understanding of sustainability develops through both formal and informal education.
Bringing lively discussions into the classroom, together we'll investigate different interpretations of sustainability, drawing on our life experiences and disciplinary backgrounds.
We’ll consider historical and political contexts and the psychology and science of sustainability, as well as financial issues.
This is a unique module that will give you the chance to work not only with students from other disciplines, but with friends and family outside of the module as you shape a vision of the future that draws on diverse and collective ideas and viewpoints.
The module has three key elements:
The overwhelming image of the future is one of doom and gloom and many people are worried about what it might hold, but what if we could use our imaginations to think differently about the future?
You'll develop your creative and imaginative thinking skills as we cover a range of topics, from climate change and AI to the importance of creativity and the arts.
The module has three key elements:
Fashion has become disposable, but at what cost?
In this module, we'll examine our own personal responsibility towards clothes and explore the real cost of fashion on the environment and on the people who work in the sector.
We'll use a range of multi-disciplinary tools for this: diaries, reflection, lifecycle assessment, ethics models and the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
"This module has allowed me to evaluate how I am positively and/or negatively, directly and/or indirectly impacting the environment. I have a better understanding of the benefits of actively being sustainable and ethics. Some skills I have learnt from this module are time management, creative thinking, and using my initiative."
"From the get-go, the discussions inspired me to think differently and especially deeper into the elaborate world of the fashion industry. I feel that the vastness in the [online] discussion boards simply reflects not only the ... courses [represented], but the differing cultures, backgrounds, and nationalities that the students represent, which creates a plethora of ideas, which is such a breath of fresh air for the module, significantly positively impacting my learning."
The module has three key elements: