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200757

Session 5.7: Roundtable: Digital Writing Research(ers): Institutional Review Boards: Mapping the Issues for Organizational Position Statements
Reviewed by Hugh Burns

Will Banks (East Carolina University), Michelle Eble (East Carolina University), Gail Hawisher (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign), Heidi McKee (Miami University), James Porter (Michigan State University), Clancy Ratliff (University of Louisiana at Lafayette), Cynthia Selfe (The Ohio State University), Pam Takayoshi (Kent State University), Laura Gurak (University of Minnesota)

Teaching ethical research methods, making useful and usable knowledge, and maintaining the whole truth obligate us to make our institutional processes the best they can be. These days that means understanding how the IRB works outside our own institutions so that we may better understand and improve how the IRB works at our home campuses. Dialectic happened that Saturday in Detroit, my friends. The epiphany, for me, was just this: Ask not what your IRB can do for you, but what you can do for your IRB. Apparently, I had to leave Texas to make this discovery. Although I left the session still wanting to share my pain and whine far from home, I did jot down a few heuristics for becoming part of a successful IRB process at my very own Texas Woman's University:

1. Encourage pilot projects [Ratliff]
2. Let the IRB know our special challenges in computers and writing. [Ratliff]
3. Draft common statements that work for online research. [Banks]
4. Become a member of the IRB. [Banks, Barton]
5. Define and share the IRB themes and variations across the country. [Selfe]
6. Embrace the role as a caretaker of ethics. [Selfe]
7. Explore the role of subjects as coauthors. [Hawisher]
8. Understand the specific nature of protecting human subjects. [Barton]
9. Start early by focusing on protocols, not methods. [Barton]
10. Ask questions locally about proposed IRB improvements, e.g., IRB of record, general protocols, national training programs. [Barton]

 Comments? 

2007 C and W Reviews Index