Responsible Online Ethical Teaching in Higher Education During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, when a relevant amount of education at all levels has shifted online, there has occurred a series of unprecedented issues related to ethical technology use by teachers and students. Behind the anxiety generated by the online teaching–learning environment and the joy of discovering the benefits of online education of both teachers and students, there have been reports of serious unethical technology use issues manifested as, for example, violations of the General Data Protection Regulation, of intellectual and authorship rights, software piracy. Such issues call for immediate response aimed at diminishing and controlling unethical technology use in online teaching. To this effect, this paper aims to outline the problems connected to online (un)ethical teaching and provide a series of guidelines to be included in the teacher training curriculum as soon as possible. Our proposal provides possible solutions to such issues as the recording of online teaching sessions without the consent of the participants and use of the recording by third parties for various purposes; attendance of third parties to online teaching sessions without the participants—teacher and/or students—being aware of a third party’s presence in the online meeting; decreased motivation of both teachers and students to participate and give their best to the online teaching–learning process.