mLearning and Creative Practices: a Public Challenge?

Literature Review

Online, the concepts of public and private are much more complex than in a traditional face-to-face situation. The increasing rise of the social web as well as the ubiquitous technologies open up issues around privacy, tracking via geolocation data, a potentially global audience for critique, and IP and copyrights questions, without mentioning the myriad legal complexities given jurisdictional differences in data laws. Furthermore, research that analyses the use of digital technology for learning from an individual perspective (Buckingham and Willet, forthcoming; Crook & Harrison, 2008; Sharples et. al., 2009), and research on the how digital technologies can be used across different system for education (Vavoula et al., 2007), highlights new ethical issues also defined as “new species of generic moral problems” (Johnson, 1997, p. 61). Based on the principles of the work of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics and in anticipation of this chaotic situation, a general overview of ethics on the Internet was defined in 1989 by the Internet Architecture Board (IAB)²: the IAB made a few recommendations³ focussing mainly on: resources access (utilitarianism), users privacy (deontology) and fraud (consequentialism). However, due to the mobile affordances and proliferation within the last five years, it is more and more difficult to address the questions related to Informed Consent and Confidentiality, for instance. In fact, Ling and Donner (2009) well analysed the behaviour tension created by this fast increase, and more specifically within a creative environment, Winters (2006) argues that it is almost impossible to make the distinction between “tracking” VS “privacy”.

The authors argue that, because of this identified dilemma (Winters) and based on a substantial increase of Ethics Association since 2001, there is a recurring tension between the notion of “this is mine / this is my genius idea” VS “this is yours / I am ready to share” amongst the creative people, which requires a precise understanding of a foundation of trust, ethics and best practices in general. Furthermore, in “Supporting Practitioners in Implementing Mobile Learning and Overcoming Ethical Concerns: A Scenario Based Approach”, Andrews et al., demonstrate that teachers and academics competencies can be supported by four ethical scenarios. During #moco360 collaboration, “Scenario 4: Whose Content is it?” and “Scenario 2: Where do You Stop?” were mainly and unconsciously used by participants.