Online Learning: Addressing Social, Ethical, and Legal Concerns

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of the social, professional, legal, and ethical issues associated with online learning. It begins by highlighting the transformative impact of online education on modern learning, emphasizing its accessibility and adaptability. The report then delves into the social challenges, such as isolation and the potential for reduced social interaction, while also discussing the importance of computer ethics and data protection. Professional issues, including the design and quality of online learning platforms, are examined, along with legal considerations like copyright, data protection, and licensing. The report further explores ethical concerns, such as plagiarism and cheating, and recommends strategies to mitigate these issues, including online testing and plagiarism detection. The report concludes by emphasizing the need for a holistic approach to online learning, considering social, professional, legal, and ethical aspects to ensure a positive and effective learning experience for all students.

Online Learning: Social,
professional, legal and ethical
issues

Table of Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................3
Recommendation........................................................................................................................7
Conclusion..................................................................................................................................7
Reference....................................................................................................................................8

Introduction
The 21st century has changed the way of students learning the program. For the
current generation, online learning is a new source of getting information readily at any place.
Due to such things, it is getting popular and many students all over the world have adopted
the new technology. It helps the students to reach a maximum about the topic and enhance
their comprehensive and reading ability (Salmon, 2013). There are many online classes
running for decades but there is gradually rise in the online learning programs. The digital
age has modernized the way people using the modern technology in their lifestyle. Through
online learning, students can access various information at the same place accurately and
without any discrimination. In future, most technologies will be used in order to deliver the
information and for completing any job.
For online environment, there are two parallel processes: first is trainee can become
more reflective, active learners and second is student and guide, both together can utilize the
online education and become more familiar with advanced technologies. There can be
various process through which we can online learning can be provided such as live chat,
shared a whiteboard, online conferencing, online multimedia presentation and much more.
Moreover, email, newsgroup boards, and course software/application are other ways through
which online learning can be gained.
Online learning application/sites: This are those software with means of providing
education, with correlated education with technology. This is the current way of strategic
learning through internet having access over various data worldwide. It can virtual or
physical.
There are various advantages of online learning application such as:
 Through this method, students can be centered learning where they can become more
versatile learners.
 This coherently increases their thinking levels and increase their collaborative
learning skills.
 Can easily access to the global data and learn through a multimedia presentation.
Doesn’t comprise of the geographical discrimination as well as time barriers. It also uplifts
their learning interest (Perozzi, Al-Rfou and Skiena, 2014).

To preserve time and to learn diversified subjects, students are spending more time on
learning online. Nowadays, every student as access on the laptops, computers, and androids
where they can easily access the information through many applications. Students can devote
maximum time to their favorite subjects and can dedicate their remaining time in other
interesting things. Students can easily learn according to their convenience with a wide range
of choices and can enjoy their freedom. Online learning provides improved mobility and
potential to access remote learning and getting more about the formal education related to
academics. It’s related to material based education which socially stimulates the learning
situation. Along with this they can rewind or record the online teaching in order to grasp the
knowledge accurately. With the high-qualified teachers, they can surely enhance their
knowledge which is the main contribution to the students. It provides the flexibility in
personal development and learning. The Internet is widely available in the most developed
and developing countries which can be accessed by people without any discrimination
leading them to a better position (Agudo-Peregrina, and et.al., 2014).
There are some other negative aspects too as online learning application as they may
not be as beneficial in delivering the message clearly as a classroom. It can’t be used for the
full personal development of the interaction between the students and teachers lacks. Due to
this the social knowledge and relationship get hindered. As there is no supervision of teachers
it lacks the motivation. Also, due to lack of competition among the others proper intellectual
growth will not be there which will lead students to ignore and lose their interest in studying
and learning. As teachers better know the opportunities, an online program may make student
miss those valuable opportunities and it will deprive their social interaction. The unnatural
communication between the students affects their social growth and interpersonal skills.
Identification of relevant social, professional, legal and ethical issues are being
discussed in order to understand the development of the online learning application.
Van Vliet & Burgess in Fernback and Thomspon (1995) described three
social elements which are social interaction, shared symbol system, and
shared value system. It mostly researches into online learning groups.
There can be two major social issues that can bring attention to online
education: inability to access the students which are struggling and
dropout students. Students taking their online and traditional courses
together are likely to fall behind in their traditional courses (Bae and Yoon,

2014). There are many negative effects of a social issue like isolation,
getting indulge in video gaming and online chatting which evacuates
them from outside world. Goldsmith (2013) described as accessing other
information like their vacation trips, success, and their love lives can make
a person jealous and increase the feeling of loneliness and misery. For the
development of the online learning application, there is need to overcome
such issues and person should have knowledge related to the computer
ethics which are related to social issues. There is a large requirement of
the storage of data. Also, use of monitoring, spyware methods, and
surveillance can help in terms of technical. There is another issue which is
commonly like the unpredictability of identity of the user or any other
person which can steal the data or can send spam messages. This social
problem can be analyzed by the professional and they can easily take the
effective decision and rational choice to minimize the social issues. This
will also increase the standards of the online education institution.
Professional issues related to the development of the e-learning application and sites
are designing and the relevant quality of the education. For developing the site or application,
professional education can be generically challenging to the designers. They would require
large graphics knowledge and their design approach must have the broader view. For the
excellence in this profession, they must have the contemporary learning environment which
should comprise of physical and virtual dimensions (Shea and Bidjerano, 2014). These two
things are mostly considered in an integrated way in order to provide the effective and better
learning experience. Through these students can access the interesting learning style which
greatly emphasis on the ground practice. The interfacing, design and authorizing of the online
learning should be influential to every person.
For developing any things their legal issues must be taken care as they can affect
greatly (Szpunar, Jing and Schacter, 2014). There are various such issues which need to be
considered as well as there must be awareness related to such things while preparing for the
online application or sites. Legal issues related to the development of the online learning are
described below:
1. Copyright: Before making any legal data, they must have the copyright of the related
thing. The fair use allows the person to use the reasonable online learning data

materials for studying privately. If the copyrights are not taken from the copyright
owner they there can be the legal case over the site owner. For developing the
multiple copies of such without prior permission is not acceptable. The data should be
relevant and accurate with permission of the copyright owner. The copyright
statement should acknowledge that the related site or application is as fair use.
2. Data Protection: The website of the Information Commissioner’s Office stated that
there are eight principle quotes which are related to the data protection. This is
completely related to the holding personal data and processing them. The Data
Protection Act is related to the personal information that is being held in the
structured filing system while personal data comprises of both opinions and facts
about an individual (Bell and MacDougall, 2013). The data provided to the ICO must
be made with fair and by following the complete law. It must be processed for
adequate, accurate, limited, relevant, not excessive and processed in accordance with
data subject’s security. Also, along with this, the data must have the adequate
protection from the transfer of data to the other countries.
3. Licensing: Licensing can be described as the legal statement which contains the
details related to using the online learning application or sites with copyright material.
The licensing will contain the legal data about the number of the devices that
application can be installed or the purchased software can be used. This is related to
the educational setting of the software. Generally, licensing in online learning will
contain a multi-user license, site license or for single user license multiple copies. The
software or application developed must be used within the terms and condition of the
license.
Ethical issues related to the development of the online learning site and application are being
described below:
The ethical issues on online learning application are mostly beginning with the improper and
unnecessary usage of most influential resource in a current generation known as the internet.
Most people can be easily cheated on the internet rather than from face to face Xu and
(Jaggars, 2013). There are many cases where students opted for the local or illegal sites for
the studying. Those students opted for any enroll in the e-learning program can easily be
made fraud with their corrupt data, knowledge or information. Also, utilizing this information
in the assignment, projects, and course can lead to failure. Thus, it is very important that

those who are developing the software must be cautious in designing the application. There
must be management related to the adequate check of material as well as they must have
ethical balance practices to avoid the cheating done by students. This can be mostly neglected
through the software developer. The person developing the software must focus on such
things as well as must pay attention in the designing of the online learning application and
sites.
Recommendation or methods which must be adopted while creating or
developing online learning application:
For developing the application there are various aspects needed and some of them are being
described below. The strategies used are being used from past many years. These strategies
are used many national and international colleges and university. This list of strategies can be
implemented within the framework of the given application (Yang and Nevatia, 2014). Some
of those issues are cheating, copyright, license, plagiarism and any other violation within the
framework of the online learning application and site. Applying these methods will surely
reduce the plagiarism, cheating and copyright violations. There can be online test available to
the student just after few months of the teaching from the material. The test must be time
limit based with negative marking. Once the option has been chosen the user can’t go back to
previous question until he completed all the question. At last when time is remaining students
can attempt those questions which are left or are unsolved. The test series must contain
various question and for each student they must have different numbers to that question. They
must be provided with short time quiz during their online assessment. If there is essay or
reports or any written work must be plagiarised.
Conclusion
Online learning application or site content have varied the way of learning and
teaching. Such things have provided new issues around accountability and ethics. There are
many students who have increased their knowledge through the online application. There is
saying of many people that proper online learning can lead to the successful person and the
person can achieve their targets completely. But while developing the learning application,
content, legal aspects, honesty and integration of the students is required and is always
considered. The social, professional, legal and ethical aspects must be taken care while
developing the online learning sites. With this there must be focus on the design, content,
quality, delivery practise and proper management of the online learning application.

Reference
Salmon, G., 2013. E-tivities: The key to active online learning. Routledge.
Perozzi, B., Al-Rfou, R. and Skiena, S., 2014, August. Deepwalk: Online learning of social
representations. In Proceedings of the 20th ACM SIGKDD international conference
on Knowledge discovery and data mining (pp. 701-710). ACM.
Agudo-Peregrina, Á.F and et.al., 2014. Can we predict success from log data in VLEs?
Classification of interactions for learning analytics and their relation with performance
in VLE-supported F2F and online learning. Computers in human behavior, 31, pp.
542-550.
Bae, S.H. and Yoon, K.J., 2014. Robust online multi-object tracking based on tracklet
confidence and online discriminative appearance learning. In Proceedings of the IEEE
Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (pp. 1218-1225).
Liu, D., Wang, D. and Li, H., 2014. Decentralized stabilization for a class of continuous-time
nonlinear interconnected systems using online learning optimal control
approach. IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems, 25(2). pp.
418-428.
Shea, P. and Bidjerano, T., 2014. Does online learning impede degree completion? A national
study of community college students. Computers & Education, 75. pp. 103-111.
Bell, M. and MacDougall, K., 2013. Adapting online learning for Canada's Northern public
health workforce. International journal of circumpolar health, 72.
Xu, D. and Jaggars, S.S., 2013. Adaptability to Online Learning: Differences across Types of
Students and Academic Subject Areas. CCRC Working Paper No. 54. Community
College Research Center, Columbia University.
Yang, B. and Nevatia, R., 2014. Multi-target tracking by online learning a CRF model of
appearance and motion patterns. International Journal of Computer Vision, 107(2).
pp. 203-217.

Szpunar, K.K., Jing, H.G. and Schacter, D.L., 2014. Overcoming overconfidence in learning
from video-recorded lectures: Implications of interpolated testing for online
education. Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition, 3(3), pp.161-164.
Siemens, G., Gašević, D. and Dawson, S., 2015. Preparing for the digital university: A
review of the history and current state of distance, blended, and online learning.
Cavanaugh, J. and Jacquemin, S.J., 2015. A large sample comparison of grade based student
learning outcomes in online vs. face-to-face courses. Online Learning, 19(2).
Giesbers, B. and et.al., 2014. A dynamic analysis of the interplay between asynchronous and
synchronous communication in online learning: The impact of motivation. Journal of
Computer Assisted Learning, 30(1), pp.30-50.
Buckingham, D. and Willett, R., 2013. Digital generations: Children, young people, and the
new media. Routledge.
McCutcheon, K. and et.al., 2015. A systematic review evaluating the impact of online or
blended learning vs. face‐to‐face learning of clinical skills in undergraduate nurse
education. Journal of advanced nursing, 71(2). pp. 255-270.
Cao, J., Chen, T. and Fan, J., 2014, June. Fast online learning algorithm for landmark
recognition based on BoW framework. In Industrial Electronics and Applications
(ICIEA), 2014 IEEE 9th Conference on (pp. 1163-1168). IEEE.
Delen, E., Liew, J. and Willson, V., 2014. Effects of interactivity and instructional
scaffolding on learning: Self-regulation in online video-based environments. Computers
& Education, 78. pp. 312-320.