Abstract
This case study provides a contextualized description of the various ethical issues faced by an instructional designer in the design and delivery of a MOOC. The defined characteristics of MOOCs in general (e.g., massive enrollment, open access, diverse student population) and the uniqueness of specific cases require a set of ethical decisions to be made for dealing with issues such as bias, fairness, copyright, and disruptions. Those decisions, along with their rationale and effects are elaborated and discussed in this study from the aspects of theoretical assumptions, pragmatic considerations, and empirical evidence. Based on the case study findings, this paper concludes with a list of informed advices and learned lessons to guide instructional designers and instructors to deal with similar ethical issues in future MOOCs.
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Acknowledgement
This study has been supported by the research project named “Educational and Instructional Model Research Supported by Information Technology” (Project No. 14JZD044), which is funded by China’s Ministry of Education as a Critical Research Project in the fields of Philosophy and Social Sciences.
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© 2016 Springer International Publishing Switzerland
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Luo, H., Millet, A., Alley, R., Zuo, M. (2016). Dealing with Ethical Issues in MOOC Design and Delivery: A Case Study. In: Cheung, S., Kwok, Lf., Shang, J., Wang, A., Kwan, R. (eds) Blended Learning: Aligning Theory with Practices . ICBL 2016. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 9757. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-41165-1_12
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-41165-1_12
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