UNIVERSITY TEACHERS’ ATTITUDES ABOUT UNETHICAL INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY USE: A REVIEW

Abstract

Continuous confrontation with changes in technologies involves building new attitudes towards ethical issues of IT use. There is increased interest in investigating students’ attitudes towards ethical information technology use in particular, and less those of teachers. The major aim of the study is to achieve a systematic review of the studies over the past twenty years on the investigation of the factors that explain the university teachers’ attitudes towards the unethical use of information technologies. The specific objectives of the present study are to explore the existing literature on factors influencing unethical information technology use in higher education in terms of two areas of interest: (a) research into investigations on the direct effects of external and internal factors on unethical conduct in higher education; (b) research into investigations on the effects of technology on teachers’ unethical conduct. The analysis of current studies reveals that most factors influencing ethical decision-making to a significant extent are internal. We need, first and foremost, strong interior springs to resist the temptation of fraud and less of the external resources. Based on existing studies, we can not extract the specific differences related to technological factors influencing unethical conduct in higher education.

Keywords

• factors
• higher education
• technology use
• unethical information