ABSTRACT
Are there pedagogical benefits to introducing drones in a practical media course at the university level? This chapter reports from a design experiment where the teachers explore the creative implications of introducing a high-risk technology in media education. A 3DR Solo programmable camera drone was the main tool for exploring new forms of visual imagery in journalism. Qualitative data suggest that the perceived risks of the drone made the students more inventive and daring in their approaches, while teachers and administrators behaved so carefully that the creative momentum was slowed down. Due to the risks involved, the learning process was involuntarily dominated by rule-following. The course was managed according to an emerging approach called responsible innovation pedagogy, and in our version, it combines features from design science and journalism. The chapter first discusses relations between technology, risk and learning. Then it explains how the course functioned as a design experiment and interprets the interviews with students, teachers and administrators. In the conclusion, we stipulate four learning principles that should characterize responsible innovation pedagogy.
