SONA
Instructors
Instructors’ Rights and Responsibilities
1. Research credits for Psychology Courses
One of the student learning outcomes for a psychology major is for students to gain familiarity with psychological research. This familiarity includes improved understanding of such issues as the following: the tools needed to conduct psychological research (e.g., use of the PsycInfo database), the process of research (e.g., research design, collection of data), the results of previous psychological research, and the ethical principles that guide research.
In order to facilitate students’ achievement of this student learning outcome, as well as to support the research mission of the University. You can choose to include research credits as part of your grading or extra credit.
Please note that you can assign any point value that you wish to these research credits. For example, the research credits might be worth 2%, 5%, 10%, etc. of a student’s grade.
One way for students to earn such credit is for them to participate as research participants in studies posted on Sona, the Department’s online research participation management system. As you most likely know, it is unethical for instructors to require their students to participate as participants in research. Thus, you must offer alternative ways (alternative assignments) through which students can earn research credit.
You have considerable latitude in implementing this policy. For example, you can decide:
- what the nature of the alternative assignments will be
- the percentage of each student’s total grade that the required research credits will be worth
- whether to allow students to earn additional research credits (beyond the what you require) as extra credit
2. The need for an alternative way of earning research credit
Although you can require your students to earn a certain amount of research credit, you cannot require them to participate in research. Thus, you must provide some alternate research assignment (e.g., a research paper) for students who do not wish to participate in research. If you want examples of alternate assignments, please email us at psychsona-group@uri.edu. The alternate assignments should be similar in length and effort as research participation.
3. How to sign your course up for SONA
Instructors will be sent an email at the beginning of each semester and asked to indicate their interest. The Sona team will load your course onto the Sona system. When students log into Sona, they will be able to select your course from a drop-down menu. Students will be able to tell the system to assign the research credits that they earn to your course.
At the end of each semester, the Sona team will send each instructor a report of students who have completed research credits for their course. Throughout the semester, you may receive a note from a student in your course indicating that they completed a Sona study. You may keep track of this throughout the semester by clicking on the course report button for your course. If you have any questions, please email us at psychsona-group@uri.edu.