Conducting Research Using Our Children, Ahem, I Mean Our Students, as Participants

Thursday, May 21, 2015, 1:30-4:30 p.m.
ED-1014

The scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) investigates the effects of teaching and learning practices, with the aim of refining higher education over time. Much SoTL involves the use of students as research participants. Yet, a variety of ethical issues arise when students participate in SoTL research and researchers bring an array of values, principles, reasoning, and duties to bear on the ethical issues involved.

Can we make justifiable and useful claims in SoTL without using our students as research participants? If so, given the ethical issues involved in such use,including potential harm/benefit, justice, and human dignity, do we have a responsibility or obligation to conduct only SoTL research that does not use students as research participants? Furthermore, do the same considerations imply an obligation to conduct only research that is likely to benefit students?

This session will use a case-study to challenge participants to think through the beliefs and values underlying their practices as SoTL researchers, tease out complications and implications, and dig through surface issues to the deeper problems beneath.

Facilitator Biography
Dr. Pierre Boulos recently completed six years as Chair of the Research Ethics Board at the University of Windsor and now serves as Special Advisor Research Ethics Education and Internationalization. During the past 17 years he has been a faculty member in the School of Computer Science at Windsor and, since 2008, he has taught graduate courses in Teaching and Learning in Higher Education in the Faculty of Education and Academic Development. These courses are centered in the University internationally (SEDA) accredited University Teaching Certificate. Dr. Boulos holds science and philosophy degrees and a PhD in the History and Philosophy of Science from the University of Western Ontario. His research is focused on Newton and Newton's own methodological pronouncements regarding scientific success. He has published in Logic and Artificial Intelligence, and a book in computer ethics, Understanding Cyber Ethics in a Cyber World. Dr. Boulos is currently completing an STLHE Green Guide in Research Ethics and the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (2015) and has committed to completing a book on Newton and Ciphering to be part of a Springer series on the history of ciphering.


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