Student Performance Studying Ethics in the Context of Internet Use

The effectiveness of teaching ethical analysis concurrently with internet use and development was studied in a course designed to: heighten the awareness of ethical issues surrounding the use of the internet; aid students in making ethical decisions about their own computer use; and improve the critical analysis skills of the internet user. In a pretest posttest study using two standardized instruments one to measure stages of moral reasoning development (the Defining Issues Test -DIT) and the other to measure internet skills (TekXam), first year undergraduate students were shown to perform significantly better on both instruments. The methodology of the study could be used to form a larger study to encourage broad use of such a model.