Design Ethics Education in Taiwan: A Study of Syllabi of Ethics-Related Courses

This paper aims to identify the scope and content of ethics components in the curricula of regular 4-year undergraduate design programs in Taiwan by investigating the syllabi of ethics-related courses. Of the 148 universities and colleges in Taiwan, there were 117 regular 4-year undergraduate design programs in 61 institutions during academic years 2008 and 2009. A list of ethics-related courses was obtained from two web-based curricular databases of the Ministry of Education (MOE), which consists of 38 unique syllabi from 29 design programs in 17 institutions. Each of them was then processed by qualitative method taking advantage of the standard format of syllabus in Taiwan. The contents classified into four generic parts: 1) course objectives, 2) course contents, 3) teaching methods, and 4) assessment methods. Of the 38 syllabi, five topics, Design, Profession, Law, Society, and Life, were identified from the parts of course objectives and contents. In the parts of teaching methods and assessment methods, seven and nine methods were identified respectively. The results reveal what and how we treat ethics as a topic in design education in Taiwan. The paper concludes with some suggestions on further research of design ethics education.

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