Ethical Dilemmas in E-learning

Activity 8: Ethical Dilemmas in e-learning

Hands up if you’re a teacher and you have a personal social media account. (ME!!)

Now hands up if your students try to add you as friends on your personal social media account. (ME!!)

Whether it’s a past student and is no longer under your care, or whether the student is a current student of yours, it’s a dilemma many teachers are struggling with nowadays, including myself; especially in this digital era.

I have a Facebook account where I share personal information with my friends and family. It tells them what I’ve been doing, where I have been and who I was with at a particular time. I teach a class of year 6 students, 10-11 year olds.

Do I really want my students to know my personal life through social media? No.

Retrieved from: http://www.internetworld.
de/img/1/1/1/9/6/9/Facebook.png

Despite my effort to prevent this by using my middle name on Facebook, students somehow manage to find me and send friend requests. This reminds me how vulnerable I am online, no matter how secure my privacy settings are set at.

Are my students old enough to have a Facebook account? No.

Although not mentioned on Facebook’s main page, the help centre recognises that ‘to be eligible to sign up for Facebook, you must be at least 13 years old’. This information can also be found in the ‘terms and conditions’ page stating ‘You will not use Facebook if you are under 13.’ So how do these students have an account in the first place? Well, that’s not my place to say.

How do I reject professionally?

According to the Code of Ethics for Certificated Teachers, ‘Teachers will strive to develop and maintain professional relationships with learners’, so the answer is pretty clear- I don’t friend my students. Instead, I talk to them personally and explain that I cannot accept their friend request due to legal requirements and to maintain the learning relationship we have. Although I may remind students the legal age restriction, I don’t tell students off or ask them to delete their account because firstly, it’s an outside-of-school account that students use for their personal use and secondly, I’m not their parent.

The Code of Ethics state that teachers need to ‘ acknowledge the rights of caregivers … and respect lawful parental authority’, therefore justifying my actions of trying to balance between the fine line. 

But the real dilemma is, what about past students who you want to keep in contact but at the same time not share your personal information? According to the Code of Ethics for teachers, ‘the primary professional obligation of registered teachers is to those they teach.’ Does this mean I can friend past students? Then do parents take full responsibility for underage use of social media?

My solution:  I address this dilemma by…

• No social media contact with all current students
• No Facebook contact with all students, including past students
• Parents have legal authority and responsibility over what their children do online outside of school in relation to personal social media accounts
• In order to keep in touch with past students, I allow them to follow me on Instagram, which I created as a result of this dilemma and for the purpose of students only.
• I have no control over what students do online but I can try to create a safe online platform where I control the content that I upload by separating my personal and teacher media platform.

Although this dilemma does not directly link to my teaching practice in the classroom, it relates to my professional practice and the Code of Ethics I adhere to as a registered teacher in New Zealand.

Reference:

• Facebook help centre: https://www.facebook.com/help/210644045634222
• Facebook terms and conditions: https://www.facebook.com/legal/terms
• Education Council (nd). The Education Council Code of Ethics for Certficated Teachers. Retrieved from http://www.educationcouncil.org.nz/content/code-of-ethics-certificated-teachers-0