Guidance for UG and TPG module teams

HREC has developed some Guidance for Open University module teams on how to implement ethical oversight of student research projects that involve human participants. This includes projects that recruit and collect data directly from human participants, including students (e.g., conducting interviews, focus groups, surveys, experiments), and projects that gather data provided indirectly by human participants (e.g., harvesting social media posts, making undisclosed observations).  

Becoming an ethical researcher

A free course, Becoming an ethical researcher, explores the ethics of planning, carrying out and reporting research which involves human participants. It will sensitise you to issues that a researcher should consider to support ethical and well-justified decision-making.

A wide variety of research scenarios are used to stimulate individual reflection and discussion on the course forum, participation in which, together with successful completion of quizzes, will contribute to gaining a digital badge.

It is designed to take around 18 hours of study.