Student-Built Toolkit Aims to Make Development Work for All

A free public education policy in Kenya aimed at improving equity and expanding access did the opposite, causing crowded classrooms and unexpected costs for parents, driving poorer families back to private schools.

In Alabama, weak local regulations and generous federal disaster aid encouraged investors to keep building and rebuilding homes in a flood-prone town. 

In New York, a chemical company buried tons of industrial waste and sold the site to the city, triggering illnesses and birth defects after a school and houses were built there years later. 

These examples illustrate “maldevelopment,” which ends up hurting people or producing unintended results, and it’s one of the topics covered in a new development ethics toolkit produced by University of Maryland students.

The online compilation of case studies, funding resources, and design and evaluation tools uses artificial intelligence to help developers and policymakers incorporate ethics into their projects. It was created over the past five years by members of UMD's First-Year Innovation & Research Experience (FIRE) program and supported with $17,352 this year from the Do Good Campus Fund. 

“We have a lot of people in the world working on different development projects, but in the process, we tend to forget ethics, principles and the people who are being affected as a result,” said Krishnan Tholkappian ’26, who contributed to the project throughout his undergraduate years. “The goal of this toolkit is to have all the resources to gain that information and implement development projects in a sustainable, structured manner, ensuring when these projects are deployed and put out there in the world, that real people's perspectives are taken into account.”

More than 50 students joined FIRE Assistant Clinical Professor Benjamin Huffman and Associate Research Professor Stacy J. Kosko, founding research designer of FIRE’s Global Development & Design track, in Thurgood Marshall Hall on Thursday evening to celebrate the free digital toolkit’s release.

The idea grew out of Huffman’s work with the United Nations and the World Bank. While developing a financial-literacy toolkit for female entrepreneurs in India, he realized many lacked the disposable income needed to put its guidance into practice.

“The question should not be if we can do it but should we be doing it,” Huffman said.

When seeking funding from intergovernmental organizations, he said, developers often factor in a project’s feasibility, desirability and viability in their proposals but leave out what he calls “ethicality.” Ignoring that fourth element, he said, can prevent a project from being approved.

The toolkit’s core components include evaluation tools that developers can use to grade their own projects based on seven, widely recognized values of worthwhile development: well-being, equality, empowerment, sustainability, human rights, cultural freedom and responsibility. 

“By making evaluations clear, consistent and accessible, we are hoping to support development efforts to directly serve the communities they’re meant to uplift,” said Alia Mulbagal ’28. 

The toolkit also features a dashboard to assess and recommend AI tools for ethical use and an AI assistant that automatically generates a customized PDF proposal project highlighting risks, ethical considerations and potential goals and outcomes within minutes. 

Pilot testing will begin next year with the Department of Information and Communications Technology in the Philippines. Eventually, students said they plan to offer the toolkit in multiple languages and an enhanced version for a fee. Overall, more than 250 undergraduates participating in the three-semester FIRE Global Development & Design program since 2020 helped create the toolkit in partnership with Africa’s One World Leadership Institute. 

Patrick Killion, director of FIRE and of the Office of Undergraduate Research, said this project is an excellent example of how FIRE successfully brings undergraduates together from many different majors to tackle real, complex research problems.

“The whole goal of what we’re doing here with trying to scale up undergraduate research isn’t just impacting students but driving higher levels of meaningful, productive outcomes,” he said.