Raising Awareness of Research Ethics in SoTL: The Role of Educational Developers

Does the subject of research ethics take you by surprise? Does it make you somewhat uncomfortable? Does it seem to have nothing to do with your research or your practice? These are the attitudes we have encountered about research ethics among some SoTL researchers at workshops and conferences. In many cases, these researchers had conducted research that should have undergone research ethics board (REB) review, but did not; that should have included a consent process for the use of student data or previous work, but did not; or that started out as program evaluation and became research without meeting the criteria of ethically acceptable research conduct. In this essay, we will argue that familiarity with our national research ethics Policy: The Tri-Council Policy Statement: Ethical Conduct for Research Involving Humans, 2nd edition (TCPS 2) and how it applies to SoTL, is essential for researchers and for educational developers. We will propose a role for Centre of Teaching and Learning staff in raising awareness of TCPS 2 and we will dispel some of the most common myths and misconceptions that abound regarding SoTL and research ethics.