PhD Program in Curriculum, Instruction, and Teacher Education

Dear students,

As you may have already heard, the university now requires that, on an annual basis, all doctoral students be educated on/trained in Responsible Conduct of Research (RCR). The old policy only required RCR training of people conducting research with human subjects, which meant getting initial Human Research Protection Program training (the initial 2-hour on-line certification when you ask permission to do your first study) and then keeping that certification current through various on-line modules. In contrast, the new policy is more comprehensive (applies to every doctoral student, whether they intend to conduct research with human subjects or not) and requires education/training in RCR on an annual basis. Additionally, your RCR training will, from now on, be part of your annual evaluation for the CITE program.

Here are the details regarding the new policy:

This year (for RCR, a year is August 16-August 15) all doctoral students will need to complete 5 hours of RCR training. From then on, and for each year of your program, you’ll need to complete 3 hours of RCR training. The reason this year requires 5 hours of training is that the College of Education wants to make sure everyone goes through the initial, two-hour Human Research Protection Program (HRPP). Students associated with a research project who completed 5 hours of RCR training last year only have to complete 3 hours this year. All other PhD students need to complete 5 hours this year. The five hours include either the initial 2 hour human subjects training if it was done on or after 8/16/11 or 2 hours of human subjects Citi modules. The Citi modules will count toward students’ MSU human subjects certification the next time that this is due. Students cannot go back to count any training before 8/16/11.If any of the above (HRPP and/or the City Modules) don’t add up to 5 hours of RCR training for this year, you will need to include more RCR training this year to make up the 5 hours. To make up the remainder of the 5 hours of RCR training this year and/or to fulfill your 3 hours of RCR training in future years, see some options below (as you will see, the options are quite flexible and, in some cases, things you already do as part of your “regular” program here):* Taking a research (or any other) class in which RCR issues (plagiarism, ethics, authorship, etc.) are discussed* Attending a public seminar/talk about RCR (the college will be offering one of these each semester)* Reading a book or article about issues related to RCR* Participating in any other activity that centers around RCR issues* Doing some of the on-line City modules offered on the IRB site for continued certification.

Broadly, you can count any activity that your advisor has determined suitable for inclusion as RCR Training.

For a list of other possibilities and resources, go to: http://grad.msu.edu/researchintegrity/

(There is a short video with examples on the College of Education website that explains how students use the RTTS site: http://education.msu.edu/irtl/training/)

It is your responsibility, as a doctoral student, to assign a temporal value to your RCR training and monitor your hours. This means that if you go to a public seminar on RCR and stay for the entire hour and a half, you should record one and a half hours in your RCR log. If you read an article related to RCR that takes an hour to read, add that to your log. If you then had a discussion with your advisor about it that lasted half an hour, add that to your log. If a course you took discussed RCR issues for three hours or more, that could count for your three hours of RCR training. If it only engaged RCR for one hour, add that one hour to your log.

Whether it is the five hours of RCR this year or the three hours for any other year in the future, it is your responsibility, as a student, to record your RCR training hours. You should do that at https://www.egr.msu.edu/secureresearchcourses/. This will be recorded on a database that your advisor will then access and use during your annual evaluation in the spring to determine that you have indeed completed the required hours of RCR training. Since this RCR training is now part of your annual evaluation, it might be prudent to complete your RCR training for the year and log it in the database BEFORE your annual evaluation (which generally occurs in late April-mid-May).

Please let me know if you have questions regarding any of this or go to the links provided above.


Thanks,