After discussing this issue recently with a few colleagues, I thought I'd toss it
out to TIPS to get a couple other opinions.
Many of us do various demonstrations and activities to enhance the learning
environment in our classes (well, I'm sure a lot of activities do nothing at all
to increase learning, but I'll save that issue for another post!). A lot of us
also like to get student feedback about the perceived utility of the
demonstration. Here's my concern: If someone wants to present the results
of the feedback questionnaire, should informed consent be obtained first?
Should an Institutional Review Board take a look at the demonstration and/or
feedback form?
On the one hand, I certainly understand the requirement of going through an
IRB and getting informed consent for most experiments. On the other, I (and
probably most of us) don't believe an IRB would need to review a teaching
activity. Getting feedback about the activity seems a natural extension. Is
there something fundamentally different about *collecting* the feedback and
*presenting/publishing* it that would require the additional step? For those of
you who have published in TOP or presented at teaching conferences, what
have you done?
Jeff
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Jeff Bartel Department of Psychology
http://www-personal.ksu.edu/~jbartel Kansas State University
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