How open, open courses are in reality has been brought into question (e.g. Hilton III et al, 2010). This links with ethical ambiguity in such spaces (e.g. AOIR, 2012; BERA, 2018), which challenge researchers to review their obligations to open course learners. It is possible, having gained appropriate ethical clearance from accrediting Universities and course providers, for educators to carry out research on the data provided whilst studying on an open course. Course participants will usually have to be alerted to this as part of ethical protocol arrangements, especially following the review of General Data Protection Regulation in European contexts since May 2018. From the authors’ experiences, this still raises significant ethical questions. Are such arrangements sufficient for all participants to be fully informed and aware of the implications of research in online contexts? Should online course participants be expected to act both as course participant and research subject when they have principally signed up to learn? This is especially pertinent if it is accepted that to develop effectiveness as a learner it is ‘necessary to learn in regions that are uncomfortable’ (Kolb and Kolb, 2005, 209). If participants are aware of the research activity, will it affect their engagement with the course, especially their interaction with others? Does this therefore limit their learning experience and form an unintended negative consequence of the study? Multipurposing 'open contexts' therefore adds to the already multifaceted experiences of open learning.
This paper is based on research undertaken on a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) hosted by FutureLearn and built with educators at the University of Leicester designed to support researchers or potential research participants in reflecting on the value of ethical thinking for research through discovering an ethical appraisal framework applicable for social science, arts, education and humanities’ research (https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/ethical-research). This six-week course starts with a set of challenging case studies to explore what participants consider unethical research and, throughout, asks participants to reflect on their own experiences and opinions. There are a set of sensitive topics illustrated in the middle of the course, which participants are alerted to with trigger warnings (Carter, 2015). Even without considering placing a research expectation of participants, it was predicted that participants might find it difficult to engage in the online forum aspect of the course, due to sensitivities in the topics covered, related to participants’ own experiences and anxieties about being unethical in voicing their opinions. The educators themselves also experienced the need to monitor their feedback on the forum, not wanting to offer any advice which might affect participants negatively.
However, the course educators wanted to maximise the benefits of having ethical debates across a diverse group of interested voices. Course participants represented diverse national contexts, professional and research settings, roles and research experience, with 40-55% of the 500-2500 course participants recruited across the first four course runs located in European contexts and around 80% of participants spread across the ages 18-55. This paper explores, with reference to participant data from two course runs, learner analytic data from four runs and research reflections of the course educators, whether a virtuous ethical path was navigated (Carpenter, 2013; Macfarlane, 2009) by the course educator researchers.
Macfarlane(2009) presents a framework of vices to be avoided and virtues to be embodied at six phases of the research process: framing, negotiating, generating, creating, disseminating and reflecting. This framework is applied to research of this MOOC in an operationalisation of Gewirtz and Cribb's (2006) call for ethical reflexivity.