Transforming Ethics Education: Connecting STEM Faculty, Research Administrators, and Ethics Education Resources through the Online Ethics Center

University Of Virginia Main Campus, Charlottesville VA

Investigators

Abstract

STEM ethics education is an integral element of the effort to facilitate ethical science and protect against research misconduct. The Online Ethics Center is the nation's premier online platform for storing, curating, and discussing state-of-the-art information about teaching research ethics, Responsible Conduct of Research, and fostering ethical cultures within science and engineering. The goal of this project is to update and improve the Online Ethics Center (OEC). The investigators will do so by better engaging faculty and administrators who are new to teaching ethics, and by conducting a series of workshops with the user community that will enable them to gather multiple types of social science data and systematically assess how the OEC can better meet the needs of its constituents. Grant funds will also be used for regular site maintenance and to hire an expert external evaluator to formally assess OEC's activities and aid the investigators in improving site usability and updating the resource collection that they provide. Together, these efforts will help improve the quality of STEM ethics education and encourage and equip U.S. researchers to engage in ethical scientific practice. The main goal of this project is to update and improve the Online Ethics Center (OEC). To do so, the investigators will engage in a systematic social scientific assessment of the OEC and its user community. This will enable them to understand how the site can be modified to better meet the needs of its constituents and to provide more and higher quality resources to its user community. They will do so first by gathering data at the STEM ethics education workshops that they will organize, and through interviewing and surveying members of their user communities. Second, the investigators would solicit, develop, and curate new and enhanced resources for advancing STEM ethics education. Third, the investigators will fund ongoing site maintenance while significantly improving its functionality. Finally, the investigators will hire a part-time consultant to act as an expert evaluator to formally assess: (1) site usability; (2) user demographics; (3) visitors' purposes for coming to the site and whether they were able to find what they were looking for; (4) the uses to which visitors put site resources; (5) which aspects of the OEC users find most and least helpful; and (6) how the resource collection might be improved. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.