Digitalization is developing at a tremendous pace, yet, some argue that the change we experience now will never be a slow as it is today. Regardless of development and speed, some issues remain and should stay in focus: one example is ethics. Digitalization may, in fact, facilitate the violation of ethical standards, such as online hate speech, copyright infringement, and cyber bullying and these questions should therefore be integrated into all discussions and applications of digitalization. Moreover, ignorance of these issues can lead to choices that are ethically neither justifiable nor sustainable.
In this section, we provide selected information on digital ethics together with illustrative examples. We would like to encourage you to consider your own digital behavior in your teaching from this perspective – from an ethical point of view.
We examine digital ethics from three angles: copyright, privacy in digital learning, and the ethics of technology-driven communication. We acknowledge that these aspects only cover parts of the phenomenon. However, these are three key components that have received much attention over the past decade from a consumer / citizen perspective, within the information society, and at EU governmental level. Despite this focus, it seems that these phenomena are not yet commonplace in discussions on digitalization and digital practices within higher education; hence we highlight them in a special section in the 2digi project.