Faculty Forum
Is It Ethical to Teach Ethics on the Web?

Ed McDermitt, UMUC faculty member in humanities, in what he terms one of his "more self-reflective moods and moments."

By Ed McDermitt

In February 2000, I was invited to participate in a panel at the annual conference of the Association for Practical and Professional Ethics, held in Crystal City, Virginia. The program was entitled, "Can This Marriage Be Saved? The Union of Ethics Teaching and Distance Education."

The challenge was to justify the teaching of ethics courses in online formats. The chair of the panel was, at best, skeptical of the value, legitimacy, and viability of teaching ethics in any venue but the classroom. I was to argue its value.

The Opposition

On an institutional level, many schools have adopted the "cash cow" view of distance education in general and Web teaching in particular. Many colleges and universities have hopped into the adult education "sweepstakes" with the belief that they can do so at relatively low cost, and have not allocated adequate human resources to the professorial task. The schools' officials have often assigned full-time faculty to teach in the new environment, while expecting those same teachers to maintain full teaching loads in the traditional classroom. That approach is itself unethical, since it exploits faculty and doesn't benefit students. Faculty have sometimes become disillusioned and even alienated, and distance education offerings have been abandoned.

On a pedagogical level, the styles and methods of instruction used in distance education at these institutions did not match the efficient teaching that the classroom environment provided—opportunities for student-to-faculty and student-to-student interactions were not duplicated, and instructional efficiency was lost.

Systems of ethics concern human interaction and the principles and rules that govern (or ought to govern) them. Those systems teach us how to deal, day to day, with people we encounter. Many feel that teaching such ideas requires hands-on, human-to-human contact—that this pedagogy has to be "visual" and sensory. It is this contact that conveys and instills moral and ethical values, much more so than mere reading of writers and texts ever will. The "distance" in "distance education" renders it an unethical exercise. Not surprisingly, I disagreed and took issue with these views. To me, the "marriage" is flourishing, and prolific.

My Position: An Unequivocal "Yes!"

What is unethical about teaching ethics in a non-classroom context? If we can only teach ethics (and, by extrapolation, nearly any other subject) in the classroom, then why do we write books and articles? Is not the act of publishing a wider form of pedagogy? And why is "publish or perish" the mantra, beyond the institutionally egocentric concept of the greater glory of the school? Don't we actually have reaching and teaching a broader audience as a primary goal of the publication exercise?

If distance education also reaches that broader audience, we academics have not only a job but a duty to profess humanistic values in such a promising medium, especially where such profession could prevent dire societal consequences. It is not unethical to teach ethics in a distance education format; moreover, it is unethical not to do so. For many of our colleagues, who have been accustomed to and insulated by the classroom, the new frontier is daunting. In that regard, the words of Franklin D. Roosevelt's first inaugural address come immediately to mind: "The only thing we have to fear is . . ."

The Challenge

What are the challenges of teaching online, besides allaying the angst of our colleagues and new students? First, there is the technical challenge. When the "machine" is not working, life is problematic. This can only improve with time and better technology. Second, there is the procedurally ethical issue of academic and intellectual honesty. Faculty diligence and the use of unique assignments, role-playing, and fact patterns of our own device can reduce the incidence, but we shall be faced with this problem. I should add that the classroom environment is itself not immune from intellectual dishonesty. Third, we all miss the face-to-face interaction, and I shall not deny that I do. However, it is possible to employ a range of devices and contacts to take some of the "distance" out of distance education.

Certain devices make the exercise of taking a course (and teaching it) on the Web more fun. Humor is a great tonic. I also ask each student to mail me an index card with a variety of mundane information, such as favorite film, sandwich, and board game. These answers can be incredibly revealing. Finally, I repeatedly assure them that there are no "stupid questions." In the context of distance education, the deterrence of "what others will think" is greatly diminished, and this helps relieve apprehensions and anxieties. Encouraging questions and dialog has been a regular "iceberg destroyer."

"Build It and They Will Come"

Perhaps this is a social and cinematic cliché, but it is still an apt analogy. Teaching ethics online will have the following effects:

1. Student can set their own schedules asynchronously;
2. Those who are timid about speaking in class will more likely participate; and
3. Instructors can provide more one-on-one mentoring.

In sum, I find nothing unethical about teaching ethics on the Web. To paraphrase Shakespeare, "All the world's a school and all the people merely students. They have their admissions and their graduations. And a person in her or his time learns many things. . . ."

Ed McDermitt is a UMUC faculty member in humanities.