The e-mail stated: “Congratulations! Your 2009 Project RITE proposal on enhancing student discussion board participation has been funded…Please send proof of IRB approval or exempt status….” Ok, yeah, my director made me put information about IRB approval in the grant proposal. Now that we *received* the grant, I needed to learn about this “IRB” process - as I’d never gone through it before.
Now other folks may tell you differently, but I found the IRB process to be fairly straightforward, IRB folks very helpful, and that completing the process itself assisted us in getting some of our research project tasks completed! After reading through the materials, consulting with our research contact at the Center, and talking with the IRB Compliance Officer (scary title, nice lady), we were determined to be exempt from full IRB review. All our online course modifications and research tools were either normal curriculum-type modifications, or study of existing data.
The process did make us design and submit the following in December:
- Changes in our online course Evaluation
- Photo permissions form
- Drop out follow-up survey
- Participants of previous online courses follow-up survey
We received IRB approval by December 19th - just in time to go home for the holidays! Whoot!