Ethical Evaluation of Virtual Universities

Distance learning in virtual universities provides the possibility of learning outside university classrooms for students, eradicating geographic limitations and offering opportunity of learning for all those who do not have a chance to access higher education. This article uses the two research methods of bibliometric and content analysis to examine the alignment of virtual universities with traditional universities with respect to the execution of their roles, innovative methods suggested to obtain their objectives and new ethical concerns arising in this sphere. We have investigated the compatibility of virtual universities’ values in relation to goals achieved by higher education authorities, namely: transfer of academic values, academic freedom, possibilities of using different kinds of instructions, transfer of social values and equality of using facilities. The process of becoming accommodated with traditional university objectives demands, in itself, the development of new technologies such as blogs, wikis, social networks, university simulations, mobile games and mobile learning. In this method of learning, a content that is built and distributed differently creates new ethical dilemmas. Each section in this article discusses how to solve these problems. At the end, after analysing ethical problems, three modes of virtue ethics, prevention and use of new technology is proposed.