Instructor's Privacy in Distance (Online) Teaching: Where Do You Draw the Line?

The exponential growth of distance learning provision in the past forty years poses pertinent and critical ethical issues. Students participating in distance education via an online course are required to recognize and resolve various ethical issues, some of which focus on the instructor's actions. The university, too, as it supports students and instructors, is ethically involved in the process. As the number of online classes continues to grow, an increasing number of articles are being written about student and program integrity but there is a notable absence of articles or research focusing on the emerging issue of institutional integrity in relation to instructors. The ideology of New DEEL’s (Democratic Ethical Educational Leadership) speaks to the ethical basis of online teaching and this paper delineates an authentic ethical dilemma for which a universalized and generalized ethical model is proposed to be usefully applied to all issues involving privacy of participants.

All names are fictitious.

Distance education is a discipline that subsumes the knowledge and practice of pedagogy, of psychology and sociology, of economics and business, of production and technology. (Anderson & Elloumi, 2004, Athabasca University, Canada's Open University)

There can be no doubt that much good practice has evolved in the field already, largely organically, and there are as yet few comprehensive guides available for any university or college in the United Kingdom or elsewhere venturing into the open and distance learning market. This is in stark contrast to many other professions— the practices of law and medicine, for instance, both of which are governed by explicitly formulated ethical principles (Gourley, 2007 Vice-Chancellor of the Open University, UK).