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Institutional Review
Board and the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning
IRB and the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning:
The Youngstown Experience
It’s ironic but true that as humanists relatively few of us study
actual humans, or at least not in ways that require us to engage with
the Institutional Review Boards at our schools. One of the scariest challenges
of getting involved with scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) can
be writing the first IRB application. When I started my first project,
I consulted with a colleague in the School of Education, who does ethnographic
research in elementary education. He sent me copies of his IRB statements,
which mostly confused me and certainly intimidated me, but a phone call
to the director of grants and sponsored programs reassured me. At Youngstown
most SoTL falls under the “exempt” category, because we’re
doing educational research with adults. So filing for approval is relatively
easy: write up a description of the project, including how you will gather
evidence and how you will protect students from being adversely affected,
and include copies of a consent letter and any surveys, interview prompts,
or think-aloud protocols you plan to use.
Ah, but what about those? This won’t be a popular sentiment, but
I’ve found that the IRB process helps me be more methodical in my
research, because it asks me to plan more comprehensively in advance.
I have to map out what I plan to do fairly carefully, yet I have never
felt that I had to clear every in-class assessment or revision of a survey
with the IRB. My sense is that what they are most concerned with is protecting
students, and as long as my overall plan and my consent letter ensures
that students’ grades won’t be affected by the project and
that their identities will be protected, the IRB folks have been content.
At the same time, having to present this work to the IRB has made me much
more thoughtful about the ethics of SoTL. Unlike my disciplinary research,
which uses public documents, much of them created and used by people who
are long dead, SoTL draws on the ideas and experiences of real people
with whom I interact regularly, for whom I am responsible, and whose welfare
concerns me. That’s actually part of what I like about this work.
Sherry Linkon
Youngstown State University
Sherry
Linkon's Consent Form
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