The first level of practice is exemplified by the work undertaken by the growing variety of institutions that provide opportunities to learn through the distance education mode, thereby helping their audiences to attain specified learning goals. The second level at which that same practice plays a role is less well visible, unless one broadens one's perspective to the learning environment at large, which is made up of different segments, such as the formal school system, the family, distance education institutions, libraries, the broadcast media, and the Internet. Often, what one learns in one segment cannot be easily brought to bear on what one can learn in another segment. The learning environment at large lacks integrity. The flexibility inherent in distance education and open learning is therefore a most welcome feature that can help bridge the gaps between the different segments and can forge them into an organic whole.
Ethical questions come into play at each of the two levels referred to in the previous paragraph.
At the latter level, that of the learning environment at large, such questions relate to the important role distance education and open learning can play to change the learning landscape forever. For that role to be played, the field must seriously fight the temptation to become self-satisfied with its early successes, replicating them over and over again, rather than following its original revolutionary spirit to constantly challenge existing wisdom and search for alternatives. This poses questions to the profession as such, about how it sees itself, and to the role research is to play in either sustaining existing discourse and action or in helping it to break through its own barriers. At the former level, at which distance education and open learning serves specific learning goals, moral questions range from the institutional ethics of facilitating institutions down to the ethical principles that guide different actors within the institutional context, such as the developers of the instruction, administrators, evaluators and researchers, and individual human facilitators as well as the learners themselves. A search of the literature, including documentation available on the World Wide Web, reveals little explicit concern with ethical questions among the community of professionals active in the area of distance education and open learning.