
the Albanian Center for Economic Research (ACER)
and supported by the foundation “Mary Ward Loreto”.
The Department of Philosophy at this Faculty has
included digital Ethics in its curriculum and manages the
scientific Master “Ethics in Institutions and leadership”,
which focuses on problems even on a national scale. At
the same time, it is the organizer of the Global Day of
Ethics, when the focus becomes critical thinking,
academic studies, and debates related to ethical
principles and how they help institutional processes and
digitalization. This is the profile of the Department of
Philosophy; the experience of teaching online during
COVID-19, which determined the necessity for such a
study aiming at a contribution to Ethics in the process of
digitalization and the international ranking of our
university. But now it has a new profile, that of an
interdisciplinary team of researchers in cooperation with
the Department of Informatics and Applied Statistics of
the Faculty of Economics, the Department of
Informatics and Statistics in the Faculty of Natural
Sciences of the UT.
Even though the University of Tirana has
incorporated and adapted to almost all of its
structures technology and digital communication,
little has been spoken, and even less has been
standardized, about how and by what rules or
guidelines, written or unwritten, this
communication will be successfully and
transparently conducted. In many studies and
publications on digital communication and
interaction, terms such as digital services, digital
skills, digital competence, digital infrastructure,
digital library, digital curriculum, etc., are often
mentioned, but the term digital ethics is rarely
encountered, even though it is of paramount
importance and should be addressed first. Research
indicates that the only publication that deals with
digital communication education is a publication by
the Council of Europe titled 'Manual for Digital
Citizenship Education' [5], which is not primarily
focused on digital ethics but mainly on protecting
children from the rapid development of technology.
Institutional digital ethics, the achieved quality,
ethical auditing on it, legal regulation, and
measuring human resource perceptions in the
institutional community are still unexplored
research areas. For all the reasons mentioned
above, the University of Tirana has challenged
itself to win and develop a project supported by the
National Agency for Research and Innovation. This
project is an added value not only for our
institution but for the entire academic community
in Albania, government leadership structures, and
society as a whole. This is because digital ethics
involves ethical online behaviors and interactions
based on the ability to understand and appreciate
the feelings and perspectives of others.
2 Literature Review
Nowadays, technological development in every
field is leading to the computerization of all work
processes, starting from state institutions, private
institutions, and every other existing enterprise.
This has come as a result of the goal to simplify the
process of providing services by the above-
mentioned respective actors. Also, many
companies cooperating for certain purposes are
forced to unify the cooperation process and the
other party, even if it has not incorporated a certain
service in specific platforms, is forced because the
nature of the work between them requires it. If we
focus on the development of the academic field in
technology, nowadays, its actors, mainly professors
know how to use technology in their daily lives
because they are part of a society that relies heavily
on technology, and understanding and using it has
become necessary for life today, [6]. Ongoing we
can say that ICT (Information Communication
Technology) is being incorporated nowadays in
academic institutions at a high speed, and it has
brought a significant change in the way of teaching.
The advantages that ICT has, have been studied
and mentioned in various literature where the focus
is the simplification of the process of information
absorption for both professors and students, [7] ,
pointed the positive effects that ICT has in the
academic field, thus mentioning: the increase in the
will of professors to develop their knowledge
through the modern tools that ICT offers, the easier
access to lessons as well as the relevant literature,
the change in the methodologies of teaching by
professors and developing them professionally, etc.
On the other hand, [8], stated that professors have a
normal way of thinking about using technology by
making it difficult to include it in their lessons,
which stops universities from making new changes
and improvements. Also, [9], asserted that "the key
to the successful integration of ICT in education is
the teaching staff; therefore it is very important to
investigate the factors directly related to their
attitude". The latter in his study revealed that age is
one of the influencing factors in the adaptation of
ICT in the work process of professors of a
university presenting a significant difference
between the age of participants and their attitude
towards ICT, [9]. In [7], also stated significant
differences between the integration of ICT by
professors based on age where it was found that
young teachers tend to use new technologies more
for teaching purposes than older professors. We
have other studies, such as [10], that show the
opposite results of the significant correlation
mentioned above. In this paper [4], it was
WSEAS TRANSACTIONS on ADVANCES in ENGINEERING EDUCATION
DOI: 10.37394/232010.2024.21.5
Majlinda Keta, Valentina Sinaj