Development of ethical codes for instructors engaged in distance education: a Delphi study

Ethical codes are written documents that delineate a set of rules and principles that guide the duties and responsibilities of professionals within a professional organization from an ethical perspective. The research aims to develop an ethical code framework for instructors engaged in distance education. The Delphi, a qualitative research method, was employed to achieve this aim. The study included 22 distance education experts, selected via purposive sampling. The Delphi technique, conducted in three rounds, commenced with an evaluation of the ethical dimensions of distance education. In the study's second phase, we invited participants to suggest additional ethical codes for the agreed-upon dimensions. We collected the suggestions and agreed on specific ethical code items in the third round. The researchers thus established the final form of the ethical code list. This process resulted in developing an ethical code framework for instructors engaged in distance education. The framework comprises sixdimensions: Instructional Design (ID), Social Interaction (SI), Content Provision (CP), Technology Usage (TU), Management (M), and Assessment and Evaluation (AE). It includes 62 ethical code items. The study demonstrates that the ethical code dimensions align with the roles of online instructors, as described in the relevant literature. This alignment substantiates the ethical code framework's validity and reliability.