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Development of Role-Play Scenarios for Teaching Responsible Conduct of Research

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Abstract

We describe the development, testing, and formative evaluation of nine role-play scenarios for teaching central topics in the responsible conduct of research to graduate students in science and engineering. In response to formative evaluation surveys, students reported that the role-plays were more engaging and promoted deeper understanding than a lecture or case study covering the same topic. In the future, summative evaluations will test whether students display this deeper understanding and retain the lessons of the role-play experience.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Catherine Chang for compiling the survey data in the spring of 2007, Deb Aronson for editing the scenarios, Andrew Cohen for general helpful comments, and Stephanie Seiler for comments on an early draft of this paper. We also thank the graduate students and their departments at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign for testing the role-play scenarios. Jennifer Turns called our attention to the work of Jarvis on disjunctures. This work was supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant ERC-0628814. The views, opinions, and conclusions of this paper are not necessarily those of the University of Illinois, or the National Science Foundation.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, The University of Tulsa, Tulsa, OK, USA

    Bradley J. Brummel

  2. Colleges of Business and Medicine, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Champaign, IL, USA

    C. K. Gunsalus

  3. Proctor & Gamble, Cincinnati, OH, USA

    Kerri L. Anderson

  4. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Coordinated Science Laboratory, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1308 W. Main St., Urbana, IL, 61801, USA

    Michael C. Loui

Authors
  1. Bradley J. Brummel
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  2. C. K. Gunsalus
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  3. Kerri L. Anderson
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  4. Michael C. Loui
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Michael C. Loui.

Additional information

All of the research reported in this paper was conducted when Bradley J. Brummel and Kerri L. Anderson were affiliated with the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Brummel contributed to the development of the final versions of all of the role-play materials, conducted three of the testing sessions, designed the survey, conducted the data analyses, helped collect and compile the data, and drafted part of the manuscript.

Gunsalus created eight of the scenarios, conducted seven of the testing sessions, and drafted part of the manuscript.

Anderson contributed to the development the final versions of all of the role-play materials, helped collect and compile the data, and drafted part of the manuscript.

Loui created one of the scenarios, conducted four of the testing sessions, and drafted part of the manuscript.

Appendices

Appendix 1: Example of a Role-Play Scenario: Data Management

Professor Role

What follows is an outline of your role. You will need to improvise to some extent – be creative but try to stay within the bounds of what seems realistic.

You are a professor who just received tenure: you have conducted successful research projects, written influential papers and received awards for your work. When you started, your research group was very small, and it has grown rapidly since then. Now that you lead a large group with ten graduate students and two post-docs, you do not have the time to check everyone’s work on every project. You have good students who are well trained and conscientious.

You are about to meet with a student in whom you are very disappointed. You asked the student to reproduce some preliminary results produced by your star post-doc that your lab has already published. Reproducing results is important because it confirms previous work. This helps students improve their lab skills, even if these students are unlikely to be named as authors on this series of papers. Until recently, you had a good opinion of this student’s skills and work ethic.

This student seems unwilling to put in the time and effort to complete the task promptly. You assume that the unwillingness to work hard is because the student thinks the task you have assigned is boring and unnecessary. It may even stem from jealousy or from a fundamental misunderstanding of how research is conducted. Students earn the right to have others help them in the future by doing non-glamorous supporting work for you and the post-doc now. Because this student has been so lazy and slow, you had to assign a second student to work on this routine confirmation. So far, neither student has finished the task. You are frustrated and impatient.

You don’t want to be too hard on the student, but the student must start working harder immediately. In your meeting, you need to balance several goals: advancing the student’s education; ending an unproductive attitude; and motivating the student to complete the task soon and well.

Prepare for your meeting with your student.

Professor Role-Play Notes

  • You believe the student is not trying hard enough to replicate the post-doc’s results

  • You want to make it clear you are disappointed

  • You want to set clear expectations: the student must contribute to the work of the lab

  • You have not had time to check everyone’s work on every project

Plan for your meeting:

  • Write questions that you will ask the student

  • Follow-up questions that you might ask

  • Questions that the student might ask you, and your answers

Student Role

What follows is an outline of your role. You will need to improvise to some extent – be creative but try to stay within the bounds of what seems realistic.

You are a second-year graduate student in a large research group. You like and respect your adviser and have been very happy in this group. Your research adviser just received tenure last year. Your adviser published an early paper in a major scientific journal and then received an award from an important federal agency. The group has grown rapidly with your adviser’s success.

For months you have been trying to reproduce experimental results obtained by a post-doc in your group. Your lab has already published the post-doc’s results as preliminary findings in a journal article that is getting a lot of attention. You have worked very hard to replicate the work: you have run the experiments many times, and you have watched the post-doc to see his techniques. You are sure you are doing the work correctly and still you are getting nowhere. Your adviser keeps asking you to finish and seems angry about the amount of time you are taking. You have never had anyone angry with you like this before. Your adviser recently assigned another student in the group to do the same work, and that student is also mad at you for diverting her work.

You are now sure that it is not possible to obtain the results reported by the post-doc. You do not feel comfortable confronting the post-doc yourself. The stress is keeping you from sleeping. You have an appointment with your adviser to discuss this mess. You have reviewed your notebooks to make sure that it is in good order and that you have properly documented everything you have done. You are sure you haven’t missed anything.

Additionally, you don’t think it would ever have been possible to do the work in your lab: your lab never had enough of the materials to complete the work that was reported in the journal article. You even checked with the department’s business manager, and according to the university’s electronic purchasing records, no one either inside or outside your group has ordered these materials in a few years—except for you when you started this project. Furthermore, you have found out that the equipment necessary for at least one part of the experiment was not working in the month when the post-doc said he did the work.

You don’t know what to do. You do not want to believe the post-doc made up the results but you don’t know what else to think. That would be horrible for your adviser and your lab. Your adviser is not very strict in reviewing notebooks and supervising the lab, so you hope that there is some mistake that will explain the inconsistencies.

Prepare for your meeting with your adviser.

Student Role-Play Notes

  • Your professor and this lab have an excellent reputation

  • You are sure you ran the experiments correctly

  • You documented everything you did while running the experiments

  • You’re confused about the lack of research materials and broken equipment and afraid the confront the post-doc

Plan for your meeting:

  • Write questions that you will ask the student

  • Follow-up questions that you might ask

  • Questions that the student might ask you, and your answers

Discussion Starter

Professor: Hello … Please come in …

Grad Student: Thanks … You wanted to talk about the experiments that I have been running…

Professor: Yes … I’m curious as to why it is taking so long to reproduce the results that our post-doc has found … All you have to do is repeat the same procedures …

Grad Student: I don’t really understand why they aren’t working either … I documented everything I did in my notebook, and I know I didn’t miss anything …

Professor: I’ll look at your notebook after our meeting … but have you considered the time and effort that is required of graduate students working for a large research lab? … It involves doing a lot of work that may seem unimportant to you now, but it will benefit you in your future …

Grad Student: I really do understand … I’ve been trying very hard to reproduce the results, and I do not understand what’s wrong … so I have investigated a number of reasons as to why the experiments have not been working …

Professor: Have you fixed the problem yet?

Grad Student: I don’t think the lab had enough materials to run the original experiments …

Professor: What? That’s very strange … Have you talked to the post-doc about this?

Appendix 2: Formative Evaluation Survey

  1. 1.

    Which role did you have in the role-play?

( ) student    ( ) professor    ( ) observer

  1. 2.

    How would you rate your experience in participating in the role-play?

( ) very good    ( ) good    ( ) neutral    ( ) bad    ( ) very bad

  1. 3.

    Do you think the role-play was a worthwhile use of time for learning research ethics?

( ) Yes    ( ) No

  1. 4.

    Specifically, what is the most important thing that you learned?

  2. 5.

    What do you see as the advantages and disadvantages of the role-play over a lecture or written case study?

  3. 6.

    Did you find the role-playing notes helpful?

( ) Yes    ( ) No

  1. 7.

    Did you find the discussion starter helpful?

( ) Yes    ( ) No

  1. 8.

    Is there anything that could be changed to improve the role-play for you?

  2. 9.

    Other comments?

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Brummel, B.J., Gunsalus, C.K., Anderson, K.L. et al. Development of Role-Play Scenarios for Teaching Responsible Conduct of Research. Sci Eng Ethics 16, 573–589 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-010-9221-7

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