In 2018, Duke Learning Innovation introduced the WALTer IRB template (WALT was an acronym for “We Are Learning Too”), a template for teaching research that made it easier to do research on teaching at Duke. In the four years since introducing this template, our office has collaborated on more than 40 innovative research projects and supported faculty PIs in every school at Duke. The results of these projects have been shared in peer-reviewed publications, edited books, and conference presentations including many at the Duke-sponsored Pandemic Pedagogy Research Symposium.
We recently released a major update to our template, now named the more straightforward “2022 IRB Protocol Template” (.docx). Some key changes include:
- We no longer require a second consent form to request the use of student course data in research; the consent form provided in our template covers both course data and related student information such as feedback surveys or copies of assignments.
- Research data may be used in future research projects by default unless a researcher chooses to specify otherwise.
- We provide specific instructions for how to manage and store data to comply with our data protection requirements.
All researchers wishing to partner with Learning Innovation and use our IRB protocol for their research need to schedule a meeting with our staff prior to submitting an IRB application or beginning their work. This ensures we have staff available to meet your project timeline. We’ll work with you to make sure your project fits within our protocol; we can also help with other aspects of your research including data analysis and publication.