Your college-aged daughter is required to do some of her course work online. A couple of times each week, she logs on to the course website to catch up on lecture notes and engage in chat sessions with her classmates and the two ghost students who are being paid by her professor to gather information about your daughter and her classmates. (Yes, ghost students.)
Educators are always looking for new ways to evaluate online learners, but does planting ghost students in the online classroom cross the line, ethically speaking?
That issue has become the subject of much debate this week, ever since The Chronicle of Higher Education reported that academics in Indiana, Connecticut, and South Africa have started to pose as students to gather information about their real students.
Critics of the practice point out that the process causes students to lose trust in their course instructors. "What other sneaky tricks do you still have to admit responsibility for?" one student asked after finding out about the ghost students.
It puts into question the trusting and respectful relationship that has to be developed between teacher and student. And if you betray that trust, and you in effect set up an espionage system, then how on earth are you going to have meaningful, deep, authentic discussions?
In situations like this, I always ask myself how I'd feel in a similar situation, say if an employer hired ghost employees to keep tabs on me.
My verdict? Definitely not cool.
So what's your take on this online teaching method? Do you think its ethical for teachers to pretend to be students? How do you think your child would react if he or she found out after the fact that one of his or her classmates was actually a teacher?
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