Both face-to-face learning and online learning supported students’ learn-ing on the course. First of all, face-to-face learnlearn-ing enabled the students to get to know each other, especially in the drama workshop. Because
67 students have to work intensively in groups during the course, it was as-sumed that the co-operation would be better if the students were ac-quainted with each other. In the drama workshop, the student groups formed ‘executive boards’ for different paper or pulp mills, with each stu-dent playing a role as a member of the board. The boards were given different ethical approaches (eg., virtue ethics, utilitarianism) to follow in their decision making. The structural idea for the workshop was borrowed from Allan Owens’s process drama pre-text ‘The Four Sectors’ (Owens &
Barber, 2001). Like The Four Sectors, our drama workshop also ended with a tough negotiation between the small groups for deciding which mill should be shut down or sold. Typically, in the final negotiation the groups were fighting as one for (the survival of) their ‘own’ mill, which in turn pur-portedly improves the levels of cohesion in the groups. According to Deeter-Schmelz et al. (2002), cohesion plays a critical role in effective teamwork. Hence, besides providing experiences of ethical decision mak-ing in a group context, our drama workshop also acted as a versatile ex-ercise to build team cohesion and thus helped the future group work.
Secondly, during lectures, professional ethics concepts learned from ma-terials could be clarified for the students if there were some misunders-tandings. Also in the class session between the first and second group work and online exam, feedback was given about the students’ perfor-mance. According to Biggs (1996), the assessment criteria used in a course guide students’ learning, i.e., if the aim of the course is to enhance understanding of concepts the assessment criteria should be in line with this aim. Biggs calls the union of instructional design of courses and as-sessment of students’ performance constructive alignment. In the last lecture the aims of the course and instructions for the learning journal were reviewed and feedback was collected in group discussions.
The lectures presented by visiting professionals in ecological or corporate sustainability were important in-class learning. To perceive how profes-sionals from their own field deal with ethical issues, how professional eth-ics is taken into account in organisations and how it affects organisations’
functioning, helps the students to construct their own ethical professional identity. The professional role is considered to be a crucial aspect of moral
68 motivation, the willingness to behave morally and to prefer moral values to other values (Rest, 1986). Moral motivation also refers to a commitment to taking a moral course of action and taking personal responsibility for moral outcomes (Rest et al., 1999). Hence, professionals of ecological or corporate sustainability – as members of ingroups – can serve as signifi-cant role models for students. In addition, professionals can present con-flicting viewpoints to the students in their presentations. These kinds of socio-cognitive conflicts – i.e., situations where different viewpoints are represented by different people in a way that makes it difficult to just com-ply with other’s opinions (Doise & Mugny, 1984) – might prompt more complex forms of thinking (e.g., Myyry & Helkama, 2007) and thus en-hance students’ moral reasoning skills.
The face-to-face learning formed an integral part of the ethics course due to its role in clarifying the aims, learning tasks and assessment criteria of the course. Based on previous years’ experiences, it was concluded that students need more support and contact with teachers than a solely online course can offer. Thus, the face-to-face teaching constituted the skeleton of the course whereas the online learning was the flesh. Fur-thermore, as the students were only in their second year of studies, they may have needed more support than students at the end of their studies.
Based on Vygotsky’s (1978) concept of Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD), it is assumed that at the beginning of their studies the students need more scaffolds to support their learning, but gradually they will re-quire less assistance from teachers. The Zone of Proximal Development means that people are able to acquire knowledge together with others that they could not learn alone.
The idea of ZPD was also applied in the three group projects carried out during the course. Students could perform them online, e.g., in chat, but most of the groups preferred to meet face-to-face or to complete the task using email. Whatever the form of the group work, the purpose was to discuss the task at hand together and reach a common view about it. The tasks were for instance choosing a consulting firm for an organisation or to consider the role of responsibility in ethical conduct. Consequently, the group discussions served also as situations of socio-cognitive conflict
69 (Doise & Mugny, 1984) for the students since they had to take the roles of others and try to understand others’ viewpoints. The groups were hetero-geneous in the sense that there were both forest ecology and forest economy students in each group. In the domain of moral research consid-erable evidence exists that ethics programs which last longer than a few weeks and emphasise dilemma discussions are effective in promoting students’ moral reasoning skills (Rest, 1986; Bebeau, 2002).
The group work was submitted through Blackboard and besides the grade every group received written feedback on their performance in order to take it into account in the next group work. Thus, the principle of construc-tive alignment (Biggs, 1996) was followed here as well.
Online learning consisted of the three online exams which were based on scientific articles about ethical issues of forest sector and had same topics as the group work. Thus, both the online exams and group work were based on the same material. The purpose of the online exams was to make the students familiar with the topics and concepts introduced in the articles and prepare them for the group work. Students could read the articles at their own pace and then test their understanding through the online exam. Accordingly, it was assumed that both types of learning would support the understanding of the contents of the course. The online exams formed together with the learning journals the independent study of the course.