This project is creating a comprehensive research responsibility and ethics (RRE) training program for undergraduate, graduate and postdoctoral scholars and researchers at the University of Michigan in the basic and social sciences and engineering. By virtue of its size, this campus presents unique challenges and opportunities. This interdisciplinary program is based on a comprehensive library of web-based podcasts, which serve as the basis for discussion of case studies by interdisciplinary small groups of students and postdocs as they attempt to solve problems of research responsibility and ethics (RRE).
The discussion groups use the podcast library of lectures, panel discussions, mock IRB boards, and interviews with researchers and ethicists. Subjects range from ethical and moral reasoning and values presented by faculty from the Philosophy Department through issues of mentoring, fraud, fabrication and plagiarism to specific problems in social science research and professional ethics and regulatory issues. To reinforce the information discussed in the small groups, interdisciplinary "ethics slams" are held among course participants. Evaluation of the project is through periodic questionnaires, long-term follow up through self-reported behavioral data, and outside evaluation.
To broaden the impact of the program beyond the reach of its website, the materials are being shared with the NSF-sponsored Michigan AGEP alliance schools (Michigan State University, Wayne State University and Western Michigan University), the 400 institutions in the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR), the University of Michigan ADVANCE program, the Office of Student Success (that sponsors the Summer Institute and Summer Research Opportunity Program for under-represented students in the graduate programs), the Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program (that sponsors 1000 undergraduate researchers per year), and the Bouchet Society, an honor society for underrepresented minority graduate students.
