LLMs for Ethics Education
Background Information
Ethics education is a core component of studying at TU/e, especially in programs where students conduct research with human participants. Within Industrial Design, students regularly work on real world projects involving vulnerable groups, medical contexts, or sensitive data. As part of this work, students are required to submit Ethical Review Board requests, which are intended to stimulate ethical reflection and responsible research practices.
In practice, many students experience the ERB process as a bureaucratic obligation rather than a learning opportunity. Applications often contain vague risk assessments, incomplete mitigation strategies, or misunderstandings of privacy and data protection requirements. As a result, submissions are frequently rejected or sent back for revision, leading to project delays and increased workload for both students and ERB committee members.
At the same time, the capacity for individual guidance is limited. Ethics experts cannot support every student personally, and some students turn to generic AI tools that do not align with TU/e standards and may risk improper data use. Traditional ethics education methods such as lectures and static guidelines offer valuable foundations but struggle to support students at the moment they are actively working on their own projects.
This pilot addresses the need for more contextual, timely, and reflective ethics support by exploring how locally deployed large language models can support ethics education within authentic design workflows.
Aim of the project
The aim of this project is to support students in developing ethical competence by embedding a TU/e aligned LLM assistant into the process of preparing ERB applications. Rather than generating ready made answers, the assistant is designed to guide students through reflective questioning about ethical risks, privacy considerations, and mitigation strategies specific to their project context.
The project seeks to improve both learning and practice. For students, the goal is to shift ethics from a formal requirement to an integral part of responsible design and research. By receiving targeted prompts and feedback while drafting ERB submissions, students are encouraged to think critically about the societal impact of their work and to take ownership of ethical decision making.
For the ERB committee and teaching staff, the project aims to improve the quality of submissions and reduce revision cycles. Better prepared applications allow experts to focus more on substantive guidance rather than procedural corrections.
At an institutional level, the project aims to explore a responsible and secure use of AI in ethics education. By developing a local, privacy conscious assistant that aligns with TU/e values and procedures, the project contributes to scalable ethics education while maintaining human oversight and pedagogical integrity.
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