An Analysis of Ethical Shortage in The Fast Growth of Coursera

本文主要是一篇关于道德短缺Coursera的快速增长的paper范文。随着经济的全球化和快速发展，在线教育成为当前不可阻挡的一个潮流。文章主要从伦理上的2个方面进行分析引出在线教员存在一些的弊端，进一步指出其所造成的不良影响。
This is a time of technology and information. With the fast development of science and economy, people need to get more education. Only by this way can one keeps pace with the quick development of the world. While face-to-face education can not satisfy people’s need now. It is the reason why online education occurs and develops in such an amazing speed(Carson,2014). Coursera is an excellent program in this field since build in 2012 and becomes one of the famous one in the world. At the first beginning.Coursera only cooperated with a few American universities, such as Stanford university, the university of Michigan, Princeton university, the university of Pennsylvania. It got very positive responses from its students. In a short period of time, Coursera expanded its scope of cooperation and cooperated with more 12 outstanding universities. More and more students from different countries and regions registered the online courses and the course website. It provided various courses in different field from different universities. By this way, Coursera helps a lot of people who can not get into universities to access to higher education and provides chances for those who want to know more. Generally speaking,it is a fast and accessible way for people to get more education, getting rid of the limitation of time and space. Coursera wins a splendid achievement and still enjoys a good development now. Even through Coursera makes a great contribution in education, some problems occur with its rapid growth. From the perspective of ethics, there are two points will be discussed in the following part.

Students are free in in Coursera’s online education progress with little ethical limitation, it brings bad influence in some ways . First, students can choose courses freely and stop their study at any time they want.Without mandatory requirements, it is easy for students to give up when they are confronted with some difficulty. This is not a good way for students to cultivate the habit of perseverance. Second, students can express their opinions freely in the forum. Students taking part in online education are not all of high education. Some of them may express their ideas rudely or spread harmful information. They do not break the law and would not be sanctioned by law. If these behaviors are not restricted, the bad information will become more popular. Third, some students plagiarize from the online course. Some online courses happen to be the same to coursed in real university courses. When students get assignments from their teachers, they research answers from online courses instead of thinking by themselves. There may be more bad behaviors of students on online education waiting to be find and need to be restricted.

From another ethical perspective, online education bring some bad influence on the relationship between teachers and students in the real world. In university study, when students encounter problems, they always go to ask help from their teachers. They can also express their opinions and discuss with their teachers directly. In contrast, teachers can ask questions and get responds from his students timely. This real education model is not only good for students to get impressive knowledge, but also bring benefits for teachers to improve their teaching. While in online education, students can not express their doubts when their meet problems and teachers can not know whether their students grasp the knowledge or not. It hinders the communication between teachers and students,but only a way to impart knowledge and accept information. Early on, respecting teachers and value education is already traditional virtues(Dewey,1916). Respect from students is very important for teachers to gain motivation to make more attributes. Without communication with students, teachers are hard to get the feeling of being respected. Some solutions should be found to improve this education methods(Wiggins,1958).

Without any doubts, Coursera develops well since been found by Andrew Ng and Daphne Koller in 2012. It makes greater and greater influence to more and more people. Coursera keeps trying to pay more attention to the courses quantity and quality. Its efforts wins great results obviously. But most people lose sight of its bad influence. If these problems are not restricted with the fast growth, it will hold-up the growth of Coursera in near future. Students may become more impolite in the forum and lazier to think since they can always find answers directly from the online courses. More unhealthy information may be spread. The communication between teachers and students may become more and more deficient. Teachers may get less respect from students because the lack of face-to-face education. Many problems may turn up in the later development. There is not other choices but to changing this situation. Without laws, Coursera can not develop so well and fast. However, without ethics, Coursera will not go even further. It is the time to look for a way out.
References
Carson,Erin."How MOOCs are flattening corporate training and education" TechRepublic,20th June,2014.

Dewey, John ,1916. Democracy and Education. Washington, D.C. :The Free Press. 

Wiggins, S.P. ,1958. The Student Teacher in Action. Boston: Allyn and Bacon Publishers.