The General Letter for Coursework Projects

May work for Human Subjects approval if:

1. The applicant is a faculty member and the project is for students in a course that the faculty member is teaching.
2. The research project is relatively simple or straightforward and designed to be a first or beginning research experience for the students.
3. The faculty member wants the students to gain the research 'experience', not necessarily the human subjects approval 'experience'.
4. Involves a small amount of observation or research/participation time per student and participant.
5. Collected data does not involve video recording but are primarily field notes where pseudonyms or codes are used for identifying information.
6. The faculty member has already organized placements for the research or finding placements will be a relatively simple process.
7. Dissemination of findings will be limited such as in a course paper or presentation.
8. Two or three General Letters may be used for one course if the faculty member would like to group students to explore several different research experiences.

Sample General Letter for Coursework Project

September 2, 2005

This letter is to inform the Chair of the Human Subjects Review Committee of the College of Education that the students in a class I am teaching during the Fall 2005 semester, Educational Psychology 111, will be doing observations at the Early Learning Preschool in Champaign , Illinois , as part of their coursework requirements. I have discussed the observations with Jane Doe, the Director of the Early Learning Preschool, and she has given her approval for the observations. Ms. Doe has received a copy of this letter. In addition, the parents will receive a passive consent letter (see attached) that will be sent home by Jane Doe. Parents will sign and return the letter if they do not want to have their child included in observations.

Each of the 15 students in my class will be doing two 10-minute observations at Early Learning during the first two weeks of October, 2005. The students' assignment is to observe and describe young children's interactive play. All the observations will be done during morning free play periods at the school. The names of individual children will not be recorded, and no recording devices, such as videocameras, will be used. The students will record their observational notes in an "ad lib" format using pencil and paper, and will refer to the children they are observing as Child A, Child B, etc. If any of the children ask the observers what they are doing, the observers have been instructed to tell the children that they are learning about the different kinds of games children like to play. The observers have also been asked not to discuss the behavior of any child they observe with anyone, other than in class with their classmates or myself, and not to participate in any of the activities they observe. If a child asks one of the observers for help, the observers have been asked to refer the child to one of the teachers at the preschool, except in emergency situations. Each of the students will be writing a one-page class paper based on their observations. As in their observational notes, any references the students make in their papers to individual children will use the Child A, Child B, notation. There will be no product of the observations other than this class paper.

Instructor's Name:                                                                                     

 

Instructor's Signature: