TPC Journal-Vol 10- Issue 1

The Professional Counselor | Volume 10, Issue 1 109 1. Are there ethical or gatekeeping concerns that need to be addressed? If so, what are they? 2. How do those concerns fit with the American Counseling Association’s ACA Code of Ethics (2014) and any gatekeeping procedures established by your program? 3. What are some potential next steps to take with Malkha and/or faculty? 4. What, if anything, could have prevented the problems that arose at residency? While these questions are fundamental to counselor educators, they point to the importance of established policies and procedures for face-to-face residencies, effective communication of policies and expectations to online students, and preparedness to apply ethical decision-making models in navigating the ethical and legal challenges that may arise in online counselor education. Considerations for Online Counselor Education Students For the purposes of this article, an online counseling student is a person who receives some or all of their training via a distance education format. With this in mind, some of the inherent opportunities and challenges in this format, specifically as they relate to legal and ethical concerns, will be considered. A more comprehensive analysis of the experience of the online counseling student is addressed in another article in this special section (Sheperis et al., 2020). Opportunities and Challenges Opportunities for students in online programs include flexibility to accommodate life, work, and school. Online students may not be able to attend a graduate program in another format because of geographical, employment, or family considerations. Online students also have the opportunity to learn from faculty and fellow students from around the United States and the world. Yet as appealing as this can sound, being an online student is challenging. Students are faced with the need to self-regulate, and, depending on the amount of instructor interaction, this may include deciding when to enter the class, turn in assignments, and engage with their peers (Wong et al., 2019) There can be a sense of isolation and loss of social community in virtual learning that is not present in a physical classroom (Phirangee & Malec, 2017). When looking at successful online students, it is recommended that they possess time-management skills, are self-regulated learners, and are self-motivated to complete tasks when compared to their traditional face-to-face classroom counterparts (Vineyard, 2019). Legal and Ethical Considerations As an online student, the ethical considerations are very similar to those experienced by on-campus students. There are gatekeeping considerations, concerns about fitness to practice, and general academic expectations regardless of the mechanism of education (CACREP, 2015). However, there are additional legal considerations that online students should be apprised of. Each state, province, and territory has its own licensure law for professional counselors (Sheperis et al., 2016). Campus-based faculty become familiar with the state in which they offer education and may not be as familiar with licensure laws outside of that state. It will be incumbent upon the online students to familiarize themselves with state regulations so that they can ensure that their training will meet the standards for the educational component of licensure. For many states, graduation from a CACREP-accredited program is an acceptable standard of training. However, there can be exceptions even for CACREP-accredited programs. For example, the state of Georgia requires practicum and internship supervisors to have three years of postlicensure experience (State of Georgia, 2019), which is more than the CACREP standard.