Ethical Issues & Conundrums: Malpractice in the Conduct of Instructional Design

1. Ethical Issues & Conundrums: Malpractice in the Conduct of Instructional Design Richard A. Schwier University of Saskatchewan Elizabeth Boling Indiana University

2. What would constitute malpractice in the practice of instructional design? (Barbara Bichelmeyer)

3. When might we be tripping over the line between professional practice and professional malpractice? • Are we preparing our students to approach this line and to make the kinds of professional and personal decisions they will have to make? • How do we come to know the common expectations of our peers for ethical practice in a pragmatic way versus an abstract one?

4. Dimensions and fulcrums • Potential for harm • Responsibilities to: • Clients • Learners and users • The profession • Humanity

5. Malpractice • “a violated duty causing harm” (Palmisano, 1995) • Applying the conditions of medical malpractice to our own practice may raise interesting questions about what we do – and about what we promise that we are doing –questions that are both controversial and illuminating.

6. Scenarios • How should an instructional designer who intends to act ethically respond to these challenges? • How might you handle such an issue in a classroom setting; that is, what would you hope that students would take from each scenario. If you are a student, what direction or guidance would you hope to receive regarding these situations? • What types of responses do you believe would or would not constitute "malpractice" in ID?

7. As we mature as a profession, do we assume a different level of responsibility for our actions ? • Are the claims that we make for efficiency, effectiveness, and appropriateness in instruction opening us to those levels of responsibility whether we are ready to assume them or not?

8. Scenario 1 • You get to know the SME pretty well over the course of the project. During an otherwise ordinary meeting, he mentions that the company has entered into a partnership with a conglomerate they suspect has ties to a country involved in the development of biological weaponry. After mentioning it, he says, "Of course, that's off the record."

9. Scenario 2 • While teaching, you learn that three of your students are from cultures that embrace very traditional, objectivist approaches to learning. Your students will be returning to those cultures after they complete their programs of study.

10. Scenario 3 • You spend two weeks learning how to interpret the reports yourself, immersing yourself in the content. You discover that the organization appears to avoid reporting the revenue from deposits on soft drink bottles.

11. Scenario 4 • Reporting this type of information was not part of the original contract, and you get the feeling that the manager is looking for information she can use to "weed out" the employees who aren't "team players."

12. Scenario 5 • The company appreciates the importance of on-site training, but they balk at the notion of scaffolding the instruction and using experienced mentors. It is too expensive, and there is no definitive proof that it will result in more effective training.

13. Scenario 6 • You raise the issue with your client, an old-school Superintendent who is skeptical about emerging teaching methods. He rejects the idea of constructivist or collaborative approaches to learning. He insists that the students must perform -- this is their last chance, and they will be held back a grade if they don't respond well to this intervention. After all, he's spending a lot of the school's money to help them, and he suspects that the underlying problem with the students is that they are just lazy. He notes that most of them come from “the projects” and rolls his eyes.

14. Scenario 7 • You review an instructional module that was designed for students learning Hamlet. The visual design is poor, the interface is opaque, and it doesn't come close to achieving some very poorly articulated objectives. You learn that the division paid an instructional designer a commercial rate to develop the module, and the instructional designer conducted no usability testing or formative evaluation on the product before implementing it.

15. Scenario 8 • You check with the client, who is initially concerned. The client does some checking herself, and comes back to reassure you. The legal requirements for safety procedures are much less stringent in the new location, she tells you, and therefore the company is not obligated to follow the kind of guidelines you’re used to, or to teach the same kinds of procedures.

16. Scenario 9 • Your client mentions the name of the consultant who is working on a new system for him -- it is a colleague you have worked with before. Unfortunately, this colleague is not someone you respect. You believe it was her incompetence that scuttled several projects you know about, and you know for a fact that she mishandled the major design decisions on the two projects you were both part of several years ago. You quit working with her at that time because you did not trust her skills or her judgment. A mutual acquaintance even mentioned recently in passing that this colleague was having trouble getting new clients as of late, and you think you know why.

17. Scenario 10 • As a review session starts for a product on which you provided design direction at the start, you realize that what you are seeing is nothing like the design you produced months ago. Some of the features you specified are there, but the instructional sequence has been changed and new features have been added that interfere with, or even eliminate, the innovative approach that you built into the original design. At the end of the session it is clear to you that the children involved have not grasped the concepts embedded in the lesson they have just completed. In fact, several of them seem to have learned erroneous concepts from the lesson. You imagine this will be obvious to everyone else and prepare for a disaster when the consortium representatives gather after the session. Instead, the project leader stands up and calls for a toast because the focus group loved the software!

18. Scenario 11 • Harris confides in you that the company he works for, and to whom you are consulting, has not paid him in four weeks, and he suspects that if he is laid off, there is little chance that they will provide any severance or even pay him the wages he is owed. Harris says he intends to clear all of the grocery store project files off of the company's system that evening. He has a key to the backup vault for the system, and he intends to take the backups of the project files too, along with any project documentation he can lay his hands on. If ETI fires him, he will return the files and documents when they pay him his back wages.