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Creative Approaches to RCR

Three speakers provided prerecorded presentations on creative approaches to RCR training at Pennsylvania State University, the University of New Hampshire, and Washington University in St. Louis School of Medicine.

PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIVERSITY

In the first presentation, Katie Bode-Lang noted that Penn State has required RCR education for all graduate students since 2009, with each graduate program determining how to meet that RCR requirement. This approach has let to great variance among the RCR programs—some are one-time workshops, while others have semester-long class—as well as concerns about the quality of these programs, particularly since there have been no assessments for efficacy. In 2016, Penn State formed an advisory committee on RCR and the university implemented a one credit, 11-week, interdisciplinary graduate course on research integrity and scholarly ethics that uses a team-based learning curriculum developed by Wayne McCormack at the University of Florida (McCormack and Garvan 2014). This goal of this course, said colleague Michael Verderame, is to create an effective foundation in research ethics and provide graduate students with the opportunity to develop ethical decision-making skills.

Pre- and post-course assessment of the course delivered to health science graduate students, using a tool developed by Michael Mumford and colleagues at the University of Oklahoma (McIntosh et al. 2018), found that the course significantly increased overall ethical decision-making skills and markedly improved the students’ ethicality. In addition, said Bode-Lang, the course led to improvements in knowledge of ethical concepts regarding business practices, data management, and professional practices, though there was not a statistically significant change in ethical concepts for study conduct. She added that there were no decreases in any of the measures of ethicality, an important finding given that studies have found that RCR training can lead to decreases in ethicality, particularly regarding business practices. This course produced similar positive results during the COVID-19 pandemic, when it moved to an online format halfway through the semester. The university will now offer this course across all disciplines.

UNIVERSITY OF NEW HAMPSHIRE

The University of New Hampshire, explained Julie Simpson, has had a homegrown, faculty vetted and led program on RCR and scholarly activities since 2001 that has steadily grown in scope. The program is led by a university-wide faculty RCR committee that includes representatives of the postdoctoral and graduate student communities, as well as a 30 percent

time faculty fellow who participates in all aspects of programming. Formal programming includes web-based modules covering 12 topic areas that the committee developed and continues to update; triannual, campus-wide, in-person RCR training, annual RCR training for incoming Ph.D. students, RCR workshops offered twice each semester on topics common to all disciplines, and an annual RCR lecture series. There is also a graduate seminar on ethics in research and scholarship, an undergraduate seminar on fundamentals of research integrity, and an ongoing research study of incoming graduate assistants’ knowledge of RCR topics.

In addition, she said, the university has developed an online RCR library and a collection of case studies to support this programming. The RCR committee is also developing publications on topics that are not well covered in the literature as well as a program infographic. In 2019 the committee endorsed the American Geophysical Union’s Code of Conduct,³¹ and in doing so it set expectations for behaviors that foster and support a safe, inclusive, and professional environment for researchers. Finally, the university has received two external grants to develop additional RCR programming.

The RCR program has three goals, explained Simpson:

1. Raise the consciousness of faculty, staff, and students regarding the ethical and responsible conduct of research and scholarly activity,
2. Establish a knowledge base that defines normative and professional behavior as a means of assisting faculty, staff, and students in making ethical and responsible decisions in the conduct of research and scholarly activity, and
3. Foster an institutional culture of integrity in research and scholarly activity that encompasses all stages of an individual’s career.

There has been no overarching assessment of the program because the program has changed and grown incrementally over the years, but there is anecdotal evidence that the program is working for individuals and that it is meeting the three goals. The university also has anecdotal evidence that the program is providing resources that are helping to create a culture that supports RCR outside of the university.

WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY IN ST. LOUIS SCHOOL OF MEDICINE

Washington University at St. Louis School of Medicine offers its RCR course to all biology and biomedical doctoral students, said McIntosh, reaching approximately 100 per course. The semester-long course consists of eight hours of face-to-face instruction plus asynchronous activities that together focus on professional decision-making skills. The goals of the program are to help trainees analyze ethical problems using a systematic decision-making framework, apply professional decision-making skills and habits in their research, and demonstrate sensitivity to ethical issues, institutional policies, and regulatory requirements in research.

McIntosh highlighted three particular innovative educational practices that her institution uses in its RCR programming. The first practice is the SMART³² professional decision-making framework (McIntosh et al. 2021). At the beginning of each RCR course, trainees receive a

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³¹ Available at https://www.agu.org/-/media/Files/Publications/Scientific-Integrity-and-Professional-Ethics.pdf.

³² Seeking help, managing emotions, anticipating consequences, recognizing rules and context, and testing assumptions and motives.

handout listing the five SMART strategies along with sample reflection questions. This handout also lists key habits of day-to-day practices that support professionalism and integrity in research that the training encourages the students to adopt in addition to the SMART strategies.

The second innovative practice is to provide students with an infographic after each course session that distills the key takeaway points from that session and provides further reading or resources. The third practice McIntosh discussed was the use of active learning exercises designed to optimize engagement. The sessions include limited didactic instruction and instead use most of the time in activities such as role playing, individual reflection, short quizzes, polls, think-pair-share,³³ and reviewing case studies.

Pre- and post-course assessment using vignettes shows that trainee professional decision-making skills improved after completing the RCR course, said McIntosh. Effect sizes have been comparable for courses delivered in person and virtually.

Concluding her remarks, McIntosh said that her institution’s RCR program focuses on skill development with a heavy emphasis on active learning. The course is scalable for various class sizes and modes, and evaluation data has informed refinement of the program.

BREAKOUT DISCUSSIONS, PART 1

Following the three presentations on creative approaches that institutions of higher education are taking to provide RCR training, the workshop attendees joined one of three breakout discussions to discuss promising programmatic elements to implement in their work and anticipated barriers, followed by a report-back session.

One theme focused on assessment, such as how to better conduct assessments of RCR programs and when it makes sense to conduct an assessment as well as the need for valid metrics to assess ethical behavior. A group discussed using case studies to help understand how investigators make decisions when planning experiments or completing an IRB protocol. One other aspect of assessment was an idea to use tracking metrics and evaluations of RCR training efficacy before and after COVID to get some idea about how effective those trainings are when delivered in a virtual environment instead of in person.

OEC and its resource collection was also a theme of discussion. Ideas for future work included OEC facilitating or organizing international collaborations to establish a code of ethics and standards for ethical conduct and a community of practice that would first engage in a reflective process about RCR and eventually develop a transdisciplinary code and valid metrics of ethics for STEM disciplines.

Another theme across groups was barriers, such as a lack of institutional support for delivering RCR training. One group also considered the idea that some engineers and scientists view themselves as rule breakers, excelling in their chosen careers because of their ability to be creative and break rules in order to invent things and expand the frontiers of knowledge. Thus, some engineers and scientists might view RCR programs as conflicting with that identity. With that barrier in mind, the group observed that the most promising elements of an RCR program would be those that consider the identity of the engineer or scientists, especially in relation to their ongoing research.

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³³ Think-pair-share is a collaborative learning strategy where students work together to solve a problem or answer a question about an assigned reading.

Another topic concerned models of science, some of which are simplistic, focus on short-term gratification or truth, and promote competition. The group discussed how to encourage or convince researchers to pick a more ethical model of science, prompting Allison to comment on whether the RCR community could put forth a model of science and noted that there are other models that RCR training could emphasize. For example, in his field of public health, the common model for ethical behavior is to do good for the world, help others, and reduce disparities to improve health, which has nothing to do with truth. He added that it was his conjecture that a more effective way in the long run to induce good RCR behaviors will be by building character and focusing on identity as opposed to conveying specific knowledge.

BREAKOUT DISCUSSIONS, PART 2

In a second breakout session, the workshop attendees discussed extra information and support they might need to implement ideas from the workshop. The groups covered a wide range of topics, including the challenge of getting faculty more involved in RCR training. One group suggested a first step would be to move RCR conversations and practices back into the lab and among lab members. At the same time, faculty could get more involved in delivering RCR education, perhaps through faculty panels or recorded interviews that students can access these interviews in an online repository.

Another discussion topic addressed the question of how to disseminate resources more widely and connect with other groups involved in RCR work. Some avenues of dissemination discussed were the OEC and the Big 10 conference on RCR education. The CITI program and other organizations offer online RCR training, but attendees thought while courses of this type are a good starting point, institutions of higher education cannot rely on them alone but rather offer more substantive courses that include in-person discussions. However, attendees noted potential barriers at the institutional level against moving to a more complex, though not necessarily more expensive, model of delivering effective RCR training.

Another group noted that with the cost of data storage becoming increasingly affordable, providing and archiving original data could become standard practice. This group also pointed out that RCR training is new in some parts of the world and suggested accounting for the fact that not all researchers are at the same level yet. This group also noted how powerful it is to measure the success of RCR courses, to engage with colleagues across the institution, and to convey the message across the institution that RCR trainings are important. The discussion raised the issue that unless institutions and faculty stress that RCR training and research ethics are a required part of a STEM professional’s training, researchers will view it as something extra, which would make engagement more difficult.

Good science, the group noted, is fundamentally ethical, but because the research community often sees ethics as being reactive rather than proactive engagement with all stakeholders to change that attitude is important. The group also discussed graduate training programs incorporating at least one statistics course, something that is starting to happen in some disciplines but is not universal.

One topic of conversation in the third breakout group was how assessment is often done in a vacuum in which ethical decision making is assessed in the absence of the community that those decisions affect. This group also suggested that institutional leadership make a concerted effort to support and engage faculty when getting RCR programs started at an institution and to

stress inclusion in designing RCR programs, because, as noted by Sonia Chawla, “how can we do ethical research if we are not inclusive.”

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