Professional Ethics
On the Responsible Use of Communication Media for Learning By Andrew R. J. Yeaman
This article is dedicated to the memory of Suzanne Damarin, our respected colleague at Ohio State University.
It is proposed that AECT members should guide learners toward the responsible use of communication media for learning and social purposes. Just as Bob Heinich tells us that technology makes instruction visible (1970, 1971), putting our professional ethics into practice makes our technology visible (Yeaman, Eastmond, & Napper, 2008, pp. 316-319). When you notice that people are saying some aspect of educational communications and technology “isn’t right” or “isn’t fair” or “doesn’t make complete sense” or “isn’t organized properly” or “requires a person with authority to take charge” or “needs a few ground rules to be laid down” or “Provides an opportunity for learners to engage in inconsiderate behavior” or anything else along these lines, then you can observe directly the social issues around our work being resolved. More importantly, finding conflict leads to understanding the negotiation or nonnegotiation of things. Sociologists endorse this tradition of research into disagreements about what things represent because it is beneficial in grasping how people organize themselves (Becker, 2007, pp. 129-147). The window for social insight into our professional field is open to a particular view at the present. There are 20
learner questions surrounding the use of media which need answering and we are the professionals who ought to be developing the answers. By that, we not only do our jobs but also make sure we receive acknowledgment for our position in society. We are the people who should be making any necessary decisions about educational communications and technology. Therefore, a new principle is proposed for the obligation to society section in the Code of Professional Ethics: The member should guide learners toward the responsible use of communication media for learning and social purposes.
The Copyright Cop When a handful of university students experience difficulty obtaining a textbook at the start of a term there have been traditional solutions. The instructor of a class might place a copy of the text at the library’s reserve desk or with a department secretary for one-hour check out. Independently, students might share books or circulate samizdat photocopies of the needed chapter. These temporary measures work until the books arrive at the bookstore. Through the online delivery of instruction, however, there have been students using the class listserv to share scanned copies of the text. As this is use of publicly accessible institutional resources to unlawfully
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distribute copyright material without permission, the instructor has an obligation to act. The instructor is thereby transformed into taking on the role of a copyright cop. You can imagine how this will effect student evaluations of teaching. It will draw comments like this: “All I wanted to do was use the transformative power of the computer (for which we students have to pay) to electronically share my copy of the textbook with the students who hadn’t been lucky enough to get one at the feculent bookstore and he got down on me for it. I wasn’t the only one. It isn’t fair.” Nevertheless, the member deserves support from the profession for handling an awkward situation in a professional manner.
Cultural Theory We should be more in tune with cultural theory and with accepting media and technology as the object of cultural analysis. For instance, the tired concept of “netiquette” may be politically naive. The expectation for instantaneous replies encourages simple thoughtlessness. It enables exploitation of people by the communication industries in encouraging conformity and consumption. Consider what points of view might be taken by Harold Innis (1951), Michel Foucault (1972), Jacques Derrida (1976), and Walter Ong (1971, 1982), respectively. • Developments in communication Volume 53, Number 6
media reflect the economic interests of those who govern. • Technologies are not so much based in science and engineering as they are founded on desire for disciplinary control. • Through using media and technology, people aspire to build what is taken for granted in everyday life: the metaphysical illusions of being and presence. • When using electronic media, people are frequently confused as to whether to apply the rules for spoken or written communication. Email messages, an epistolary medium, tend to be flawed by the fragmented discursiveness known pejoratively as babbling.
Questions for Further Discussion How much does the use of technology for learning help promote the sale and adoption of computers and so on? Should professional technologists be laboring as unwitting sales agents? Is our enthusiasm for new things causing uncritical acceptance: technophilia? Why would bioengineering learners result in destroying our species? In what ways is technology a drug that results in tolerance and dependence? Instead of moving on to the next big thing, what are the problems to be solved? What if technology goes nowhere except to make us its enslaved consumers? Is the massive diffusion of hardware causing our technology to devolve into pre-systems AV? How does mass adoption affect the institutional relationship of technology professors with others in schools and colleges of education? In what ways are computers being used as a mass medium to manipulate people through propaganda and similar techniques? Volume 53, Number 6
Are we doing enough in teaching how to critically read technology? Are we doing enough in teaching how to communicate persuasively with technology?
Optimistic Conclusions Our profession will do well for itself by asking and answering these provocative questions. This proactive approach would also include noting who is asking what about new media and learners. Undoubtedly, there are more questions. Further, it will be possible to learn about how our profession functions in society at present. We may be able to better determine and provide the educational communications and technology experiences that are needed.
References Becker, H. S. (2007). Telling about society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Derrida, J. (1976). Of grammatology. (G. C. Spivak, Trans.). Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. (Original work published 1967) Foucault, M. (1972). The archaeology of knowledge and the discourse on language (A. M. Sheridan Smith, Trans.). New York: Pantheon Books. (Original work published 1970) Heinich, R. (1970). Technology and the management of instruction. Washington, DC: Association for Educational Communications and Technology. (Monograph No. 4) Heinich, R. (1971). Technology and teacher productivity. Audiovisual Instruction 16(1), 79-82. Innis, H. A. (1951). The bias of communication. Toronto, Canada: University of Toronto Press. Ong, W. J. (1971). A dialectic of aural and objective correlates. In H. Adams (Ed.), Critical theory since Plato (pp. 1159-1166). San Diego, CA: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. Ong, W. J. (1982). Orality and literacy: The technologizing of the word. London: Methuen. Yeaman, A. R. J., Eastmond, J. N., & Napper, V. S. (2008). Professional ethics and educational technology. In A. Januszewski & M. Molenda (Eds.), Educational technology: A definition with commentary. (pp. 283-326). New York: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates / Taylor & Francis Group.
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