Ethical Issues in Online Learning

Technology has a vital in the education by the provision of modern communication to the teachers and students in their classrooms. The most necessary thing is to prepare the future teachers in the application of technology as one of the teaching methods. The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) report showed that by the end of year 2000, 98% of students in public schools were applying the use of the internet in learning. Many ethical issues arise from the incorporation of the online learning to both the teachers and the learners. There are teachers without some experience in social, legal, and ethical issues concerning the digital technology, which poses a great concern in the state of Virginia and Florida. For instance, there are many cases of students downloading pornographic materials from the internet by using their school laptops. Another case in Florida, a student altered his grades in his teacher’s electronic grade book and was arrested and charged with the felony. There are sites that are questionable due to the materials posted on them raising credibility and reliability concerns for students using such sites. The materials may contain false information regarding the contents that the students need in class. In curbing some of the issues concerning Internet safety, there are institutes, which are developing literature that addresses Internet safety, responsibility, and social and ethical issues. The institutes are Responsible Netizen based at the University of Oregon and Bertelsmann Foundation, which provide vital information on internet safety. Some schools are using filtering software to limit the contents that students and teachers should access. Teachers and parents have a mandate of supervising the contents that the students are viewing on the internet. New teachers should go through some training on the usage of technology in their classrooms in a safe and ethical way. Schools in California and Virginia have policies for addressing cyberbullying to enhance cyber safety for their students by having students close to some staff or assistance. The school staff encourages students to report any case of staff bullying for action.

In Virginia Tech, research on internet security issues to teachers and students revealed that there were many challenges faced by the users in learning. According to the results, many teachers did not have sufficient understanding of the challenges that they may face when using technology in the classes. There are teachers and students who do not understand the meaning of plagiarism and copy paste other peoples’ work for their exercises and assignment. Many cyber crimes are ethical issues of concern in learning institutions that rely on the internet for their teaching. Some of the ones reported in California and Virginia are defamation, fraud, viruses, spamming, harassment of any kind and many others. Teachers and students report many cases of such abuses posted in their emails and social media sites. There are also cases of sexual exploitation and invasion of privacy especially for small children. Transmission of pedophile images in emails belonging to children is a big concern for organizations fighting cyber crime. The Children Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), prohibits the website operators from collecting personal data from children under 13 years of age unless thy have their parent’s consent. Such information is the full name, e-mail address, phone number, or Social Security number. The other act that provides protection to internet users especially children is the Children Internet Protection Act (CIPA), which requires schools to have a system that filters and blocks the content that appear harmful to the learners such as obscene and pornographic materials. All education stakeholders and institutions are required to evaluate the effectiveness of their Internet safety policies. Students and teachers should practice net etiquette by avoiding such issues as harassment to one another via the social sites or e-mails. The parties should also avoid the use of abusive language and during educational communication.

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