Online Tutorials Bibliography

Online tutorials can be used as a stand-alone refresher course on research ethics, or in conjunction with face-to-face instruction. What follows are two examples of well-designed tutorials that effectively integrate multimedia, video case studies, and expert commentary in the different sections of the course.

CITI: Collaborative Institutional Training Initiative
The Collaborative Institutional Training Initative offers cooperating institutions the ability provide students with an online course directly tailored to their discipline ( biological sciences, engineering, physicals sciences etc.) and instructors the ability to track the progress of a student through the course. This course, developed in 2000 at the request of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, allows subscribing members to include institution-specific information in their online courses, and also offer a more general course open to individuals without a university subscription. The responsible conduct of research course covers main topics in research education, as well as topics applicable for each discipline, such as environmental ethics in the Engineering RCR course. You must register to be able to view the contents of these courses.

For more information about CITI, see Braunschweiger, Paul and Kenneth W. Goodman. “The CITI Program: An International Online Resource for Education in Human Subjects Protection and Responsible Conduct of Research.” Academic Medicine 82:9 (2007) 861-864.

Columbia University Responsible Conduct of Research Online Tutorials
Developed in 2004, this series of online tutorials is an example of how a web course can provide a simple introduction to some of the main topics of scientific research ethics and seamlessly integrate videos of case studies and commentaries by experts in the main framework of the course. The design of the Columbia site also allows the user to pursue different areas of interest while still in the tutorial. Instead of designing the tutorial like a print text that only allows users to flip back and forth through the pages, this tutorial’s design allows users to explore concepts in greater depth through the effective use of links, navigation buttons, and popup windows. The course is made up of a series of modules covering the following topics: conflicts of interest, mentoring, responsible authorship and peer review, research misconduct, collaborative science, data acquisition and management.

Articles on Designing Online Tutorials for Ethics Instruction:

Chung, Christopher A. and Michael Alfred. “Design, Development, and Evaluation of an Interactive Simulator for Engineering Ethics Education.” Science and Engineering Ethics 15:2 (2009) 189-199.
This article describes the development of a web-based interactive simulator that places a student in scenarios where they are asked to deal with different ethical situations that commonly come up in professional work. Students are asked to gather data, access the situation, and make decisions. The simulator is currently being developed at the University of Houston to help fulfill American Board of Engineering and Technology ethics requirements.

Schrag, Brian. Teaching Research Ethics: Can Web-Based Instruction Satisfy Appropriate Pedagogical Objectives?” Science and Engineering Ethics 11:3 (2005) 347-366.
After going through the goals and learning outcomes for science and engineering ethics, the author looks at how web-based education often falls short of these goals. He then describes a research ethics education project that combined distance learning and in-class experiences to meet these goals.

See also Science and Engineering Ethics, Vol. 11 No. 3 November 2005 on Web-Based Ethics Education for more information.