As we are all aware, we are moving away from direct person to person meetings towards online communications, conferences, etc.
Do you think there are some ethical considerations to be acknowledged when running focus groups online (video conferencing) contrary to more 'traditional' settings - meeting at one table etc.
Wonder if the two situations (contexts) differ in anyway in terms of running research and ethics...
Please share your opinions and ideas, any of them would be appreciated.
Many thanks
Dear Witold Orlik
Truth to be told that "Face to Face Settings of Learning" will always be better than any settings [including online learning] due to educating/teaching-learning program is mainly focused on humanitarian/direct social interaction rather than "Electronic Learning Response".
The basic philosophy of "Teacher could not be replaced by robots or any tools" just only works for humane interactions between teachers and students by persons. We should understand that the one side that will get a much worse effect of this online learning is Young Learners since adults have their own consciousness. For the Young Learners, the ethical consideration in the learning setting should be by adults/parents/humane interactions. They should get traditional settings rather than online.
Probably those implications regarding the use of data, images and voices of those participating in focus groups. There should be an ethical consideration to share with people involved.
Yes , consent for instance to record participants and share the content later should be discussed.
If your research would typically require written consent, then you will need to find an alternative way to achieving that. Here is a reference that covers a wide variety of issues in online research ethics.
franzke, A., Bechmann, A., Zimmer, M., & Ess, C. (2020). Internet research: Ethical guidelines 3.0.
It turns out the franke et al. reference is not very helpful on this topic. Instead, look at Eynon, Fry, and Schroeder (2017).
Ethical considerations are highly recommended specifically when subjects are human.
There is definitely a lack of spontaneity with online communication. Data, images and voices can hardly convey messages understood by body language, tone of voice etc - all an essential part of interaction not only between humans but many other life forms. In addition, further conceptual exploration or fruitful discussion is somewhat limited online.
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