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Week 12A: Professional Ethics and Social Change

IST is not the only field to focus on social change and ethics, particularly ethics in technology, but its expansive professional context and impact many modern work in professional ethics and social change affect IST.

Of the many ongoing social change works, two jump out as particularly impactful to the field of IST: professional ethics and accessibility. Both of these terms cover a plethora of topics and information, but for IST professional ethics looks at not only ethics in data privacy but designing for an accessible and diverse audience. Accessibility ties into this as well, designing for learning that looks at a diverse end user population rather than the typical abled caucasian male.

Ethics in data privacy is an ongoing issue. As we know from watching Facebook come under fire from Congress in the past few years, our personally identifiable information and our behaviors online are incredibly valuable. As Frances Haugen, the former Facebook employee who became a whistleblower over unethical practices, pointed out, the profitability of personal information and misinformation is more important to the platform and its CEO than ethics. Similarly, IST professionals are charged, indirectly or not, with protecting that very same information and educational behaviors. Design needs to not only incorporate protection of that information but proper storage and purging, ethical and lawful handling of PII and other data that is generated from learning. Research in IST in particular is ethically charged to be cognizant of this potential unethical handling of data, even for the purposes of improving learning.

Ethical design of accessible learning works to develop more equal and socially just environment for learners. Learning in a traditional classroom is not the best way for every student to process information, and in order for learning design to be accessible to more students it must both take into account the varying physical and psychological needs of learners and the inequalities prevalent in current educational systems. Online learning design, for example, can cross everything from geographical school district boundaries to boundaries between nations, and can also be used to highlight inequalities in community access to technology needed for that learning (like a stable Internet connection). Designing learning to reduce cognitive load or meet recommendations from the Americans with Disabilities Act are only two such accessibility considerations, and the potential is vast for reaching more learners more equally.

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1 Comment


Jui-Hsin Renee Hung
Jui-Hsin Renee Hung
Dec 03, 2021

Hi Susannah,


As you said, online learning can cross boundaries and reach the audience that traditional learning probably couldn't. I think that's one of the reasons why accessibility is particularly emphasized in this learning context. Unlike a traditional classroom where the teacher gets to know the students better and can provide individualized facilitation as an adjustment when needed, it is more challenging to do so in an online learning environment. Since we don't know who the students are or will be, we design the learning experience with all different kinds of learners and what they might have access to in mind.


I actually think it would be nice for teachers to develop this mindset when teaching in a traditional classroom,…


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