Instructors

Important Links and Documents

This page is intended to provide information for Instructors who would like to include the Research Requirement in their courses.

Educational Mission of the Research Requirement:

One of the main goals of the Participant Pool is to enhance the education of students in courses discussing social science methodology and human subjects research by providing them with hands-on experience as a participant in human subjects research, and teach them about the current research and practice of social scientists.  As such, all studies submitted through the Participant Pool must meet the educational goals for the participants.

Ethical Guidelines:

While we can encourage our students to learn about the research process by including a Research Requirement in our courses, we cannot force our students to participate in studies.  Thus, each student has a choice in how they would like to complete their requirement.  They may participate in studies, they may complete an IRB approved alternative assignment, or they may do a combination of these activities.  To ensure that our students are aware of these options, the WPI IRB requires that we administer an informed consent to our students prior to completing the research requirement.  In addition, all participants under the age of 18 are considered Minors. Students who are considered Minors must obtain Parental Consent and Assent prior to their participation in the Participant Pool. Please note that these participants must still give consent to participate in individual studies in the pool (contact skorinko@wpi.edu for this PDF)  

As for the studies being run in the Participant Pool, they all must be approved by the IRB (Internal Review Board), and they must include a debriefing form that is educational in nature, explaining the study in layman’s terms for our students. In addition, students are given informed consent prior to participating in any study (unless exempt status by the IRB), and they may leave at any time in the study if they are uncomfortable or do not wish to participate any longer.  They will still get credit, as long as they showed up on time.  If a researcher is late to an appointment or fails to show up, the participant will also get credit.

See the Instructors Guidelines for more details.  

Participation Records:

Sona Systems software is used to manage the Participant Pool and the Research Requirement. This is a web based system that can be accessed from most computers with internet access (wpi.sona-systems.com).  All students will log into this system and sign up for available studies through this system.  The system will automatically keep track of credits and penalties and will calculate credit reports for you to use for grading purposes.  

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Last modified: June 28, 2010 11:58:22