Abstract:

What kind of research does society need and how should it be organised to address these needs? Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) refers to the active design and implementation of research and innovation. RRI asks the question how the entire research and innovation process can be organised to both minimise any negative future effects of new research developments or products and to ensure that research contributes to addressing the main societal challenges.
RRI is a relatively new concept and even though the conceptual level has been thoroughly elaborated it has not yet been properly understood in practice. In order to investigate how RRI can be put into practice an action research project has been set up. In this project researchers and fifth grade class pupils together examine RRI on the basis of an example research project and according to six dimensions. The six dimensions are participation, science education, ethics, gender, open access, and governance. Each RRI dimension is individually discussed and assessed by the pupils and the researchers in several workshops. By reflecting on RRI with non-involved young citizens, a new line of debate about RRI is expected to be initiated in the research community.
The project analysed is called BlindBits and focuses on the development of an educational game editor that aims to support orientation training for blind and visually impaired pupils. The research team for the RRI project consists of four researchers, two of them are experts in the RRI domain and two are involved in the BlindBits project.
The project took place as part of the ethics class in the school year 2015/2016. After explaining the RRI topic and discussing it in the workshop, the pupils were responsible for interviewing the BlindBits project team (including pupils from the Federal Institute for the Blind in order to ask them about their experience of being involved in the project. The pupils were responsible for assessing the RRI status of the BlindBits project. Together with the researchers they write an appraisal of each of the dimensions which details how the BlindBits project puts the six dimensions into practice. The aim is to develop an RRI assessment of on ongoing project through the six individual descriptions.
The paper will present the methodology used to investigate RRI with the pupils, their perspectives on the topic and reflections by the research team on how to integrate RRI in future research.

Keywords:

Responsible research and innovation, blind students, participation, inclusion.