{"id":23216,"date":"2025-05-07T22:16:46","date_gmt":"2025-05-07T12:16:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/educational-innovation.sydney.edu.au\/teaching@sydney\/?p=23216"},"modified":"2025-05-07T22:17:06","modified_gmt":"2025-05-07T12:17:06","slug":"new-teaching-and-learning-low-risk-ethics-subcommittee","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/educational-innovation.sydney.edu.au\/teaching@sydney\/new-teaching-and-learning-low-risk-ethics-subcommittee\/","title":{"rendered":"New Teaching and Learning Low Risk Ethics Subcommittee"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We are pleased to announce the establishment of the <\/span><b>Teaching and Learning Low Risk Subcommittee (Teaching and Learning LRSC)<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> under the University of Sydney Human Research Ethics Committee.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2>A streamlined ethics pathway for educators<\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Teaching and Learning LRSC has been established to provide a streamlined ethics review pathway for educators undertaking low-risk research with a focus on teaching and learning. The subcommittee will expedite the review of ethics applications that:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Focus on investigating the efficacy of teaching approaches<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Evaluate the quality of learning experiences of our students<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Use student data for educational research purposes<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Low-risk research usually refers to work where &#8220;the only foreseeable risk is no greater than discomfort&#8221;. We expect the committee will receive teaching and learning projects that focus, for example, on students&#8217; perceptions of their learning experience, the effectiveness of new innovations, or anonymous survey data evaluating the impact of curricular changes on student engagement and learning outcomes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">An example of a project that the T&amp;L LRSC might review is: a digital questionnaire evaluating students&#8217; preferences for different assessment formats, where non-sensitive data about educational experiences is collected, while maintaining complete confidentiality. The voluntary 10-minute survey would ask students to rate the effectiveness of various assessment types they&#8217;ve experienced and provide feedback on which formats best demonstrate their learning, posing no risk beyond minimal time commitment.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">An example of a project that would need review by the full Human Research Ethics Committee is: a study examining correlations between students&#8217; academic performance and their disclosed learning disabilities, which would require access to sensitive personal health information and academic records and involve vulnerable participants.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2>Meeting schedule<\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Teaching and Learning LRSC will meet at strategic times aligned with teaching periods:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><b>Semester 1<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">: Two weeks before and at the start of semester<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><b>Semester 2<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">: Two weeks before and at the start of semester<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><b>Post-teaching<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">: After the end of the semester 2 teaching period<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This schedule ensures applications can be reviewed and approved in time for implementation within teaching periods. Each round of meetings will include 2 meetings and potential for out of round review to allow educators to address the subcommittee&#8217;s comments.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2>Expression of interest<\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We are currently seeking expressions of interest from staff who wish to serve on this subcommittee. Members will be appointed for an initial term of one year with options for extension.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We aim to build a pool of members who can be called upon for each meeting, keeping the structure flexible to accommodate demands for reviews. Unlike other low risk subcommittees, the Teaching and Learning LRSC will meet a few times a year aligned with teaching periods rather than on a rolling schedule.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">If you are interested in contributing to this initiative, please complete the expression of interest form available on the <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/intranet.sydney.edu.au\/research-support\/ethics-integrity\/human-ethics\/committees-deadlines.html\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Ethics office intranet page<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> (look under the last tab).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<h2>Need more info or have questions?<\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">For more information about the Teaching and Learning LRSC, please contact the chair of the subcommittee Eszter Kalman (eszter.kalman@sydney.edu.au).<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We are pleased to announce the establishment of the Teaching and Learning Low Risk Subcommittee (Teaching and Learning LRSC) under the University of Sydney&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":207,"featured_media":23217,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[135,3800,296],"coauthors":[573],"class_list":["post-23216","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-events","tag-research","tag-scholarship-of-teaching-and-learning","tag-sotl","post-item","post-even"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/educational-innovation.sydney.edu.au\/teaching@sydney\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23216","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/educational-innovation.sydney.edu.au\/teaching@sydney\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/educational-innovation.sydney.edu.au\/teaching@sydney\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/educational-innovation.sydney.edu.au\/teaching@sydney\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/207"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/educational-innovation.sydney.edu.au\/teaching@sydney\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23216"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/educational-innovation.sydney.edu.au\/teaching@sydney\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23216\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23265,"href":"https:\/\/educational-innovation.sydney.edu.au\/teaching@sydney\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23216\/revisions\/23265"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/educational-innovation.sydney.edu.au\/teaching@sydney\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23217"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/educational-innovation.sydney.edu.au\/teaching@sydney\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/educational-innovation.sydney.edu.au\/teaching@sydney\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23216"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/educational-innovation.sydney.edu.au\/teaching@sydney\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23216"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/educational-innovation.sydney.edu.au\/teaching@sydney\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=23216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}