Running head: Ethical Practices of Technology Usage

Ethical Practices of Technology Usage Lauraly DuBois EDU 697 Capstone: A Project Approach Instructor: Dr. Keith Pressey 12/5/2013

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Ethical Practices of Technology Usage Ethical practices of technology usage have been in the forefront of my life since I began my collegiate journey in the 1990s. I will review my own personal experience, what I have learned in previous courses within the MATLT program and week three online discussions pertaining to the importance of ensuring ethical practices are in place during technology usage. Next, I will review instructional design principles and theories intended to provide ethics and standards when using technology. I will also discuss my redesigned lesson including the principles and theories utilized in the redesign and challenges experienced during the redesign. I feel that I have perhaps caused undue ethical dilemmas among my users at work due to the change of normal processes during my software upgrades. Many of my users are what I lovingly call button pushers which means they have a detailed set of instructions and if one step changes they cannot function until they create a new set of directions. During this past week and a half I had a scheduled upgrade to one of my servers. This upgrade demanded a halt in multiple services and software access to all of our students on campus as well as our department staff in the areas of door security, meal plans, work orders, activities and online contracts. The preparation for this upgrade took a week of additional intense task work denying other much needed tasks to not be completed. The upgrade was to only take one day but took three days instead. This upgrade was very intense as it placed many features and modules on the web in addition to providing mobile access to students for various applications. According to Linn (2007) I should have analyzed the situation to provide the least negative impact to my users. I should have scheduled the upgrade one week later to minimize the damage caused by the delayed upgrade timeline. I negatively impacted the work of myself, my users, the students and staff thereby breaking a professional ethical standard. Now that the upgrade is complete, my

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users continue to find broken pieces that must be fixed leaving again other tasks undone. Then my Analyst called in sick leaving these past two weeks to be a blur with little sleep! I could have reduced the amount of interruption in work productivity if I had properly scheduled the upgrade. I noticed the majority of classmates during our week three discussions were critical of the online Hangout collaboration as an ethical challenge and advised upon avoidance of this site. Some classmates approved of the site and provided suggestions to promote safe ethical standards to protect the learners from harm. Redesign for MATLT Learning Outcome #5 My redesign included converting a Microsoft Word document from class EDU651 Collaboration & Learning in a Virtual Environment week one assignment into a Microsoft PowerPoint presentation. The initial document discussed the encouragement of instructors to increase the usage of technology during the transfer of knowledge while maintaining ethical standards to protect learner rights. I included the history of the Association for Educational Communication Technology (AECT) which is the highest reference of ethics in academics describing the code of professional ethics (Linn, 2007). I will have to agree with Moore (2009) in that many understand the importance of the need for ethical standards in the professional and academic arena; however, many professionals do not have a good grasp on the interpretation and application of these standards. Redesign Challenges The design and implementation challenges I experienced in converting this previous assignment from Microsoft Word to Microsoft PowerPoint included the planning of which documentation should be added to the screen and what new information could be added. I had to delete a few paragraphs from the previous assignment for a more streamlined slide progression

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of the topic. I slightly touched upon the ethical significance of increasing the usage of technology and the direct application of ethical compliance standards that must be maintained. One such issue discussed on the American Library Association (2008) website includes the prevention of using copyrighted material on the web such as copying a paper written work and placing the contents on the web. I have discussed my own personal challenges to ensure ethical standards are instilled during technology usage, how previous courses have assisted my improvement in this area as well as my classmate discussions on this topic. I have reviewed the instructional design principles applicable in my redesign from a previous course and the historic origins regarding the need for these standards and the evolution of applications to the academic arena.

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References American Library Association. (2008). DMCA: The Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Retrieved from http://www.ala.org/advocacy/copyright/dmca. Document ID: 4475af848124-92c4-399c-e40af22c29e3 Lin, H. (2007). The ethics of instructional technology: issues and coping strategies experienced by professional technologists in design and training situations in higher education. Educational Technology Research and Development, 55, 411-437. Retrieved from http://edweb.sdsu.edu/courses/ed690mb/ethics.pdf. Moore, S. L. (2009). Social responsibility of a profession: An analysis of faculty perception of social responsibility factors and integration into graduate programs of educational technology. Performance Improvement Quarterly, 22(2), 79-96. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/218565657?accountid=32521 Richardson, W. (2010). Blogs, wikis, podcasts, and other powerful web tools for classrooms (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks: Corwin Press.