My first pass was around 2019, so I had to do it all over again this year to continue drawing from my SSHRC grant. Yes, lots of time, and you have to pass at least
80% of the questions to get your certificate. Last year, a postdoc who visited from Argentina also had to spend about four hours doing the exam. Very annoying.
From: Mark Fettes <mtfettes@sfu.ca>
Date: Tuesday, 5December 2023 at 5:31 PM
To: Nicky Didicher <didicher@sfu.ca>
Cc: "academic-discussion (academic-discussion@sfu.ca)" <academic-discussion@sfu.ca>
Subject: Re: DORE demands re: updated TCPS2 tutorial
Your experience echoes that of my graduate students, Nicky…
Mark
On Dec 5, 2023, at 4:59 PM, Nicky Didicher <didicher@sfu.ca> wrote:
FYI, this is drifting from the original question.
I did the tutorial for the first time this year (in English lit we don't often have human subjects in our research!), and yes it took four hours.
I want to ask, did the previous version have as many glitches in the online system?
You have to get a high % of questions correct to pass, but any question that requires you to choose more than one answer is impossible to get right because the system will only let you click one item. Also,
even though I put English as my preferred language, it gave me some questions in French. My French is pretty good, but not up to the legal specific finicky wordings of the multiple choice answer possibilities. I discovered partway through that you can elect
to skip some questions...and I discovered before the end that it's a limited number of skips. I did pass, but only just.
When I emailed to complain about the problems with the online test, the response I got was not an apology, just "we're aware of the problem."
From: Victoria Claydon <victoria_claydon@sfu.ca>
Sent: December 5, 2023 3:08:24 PM
To: Enda Brophy; academic-discussion (academic-discussion@sfu.ca)
Cc: Geoffrey Poitras; Jeremy Snyder
Subject: RE: DORE demands re: updated TCPS2 tutorial
Perhaps I can help here. The requirement to have completed the new version of the TCPS2 tutorial is a policy that was announced in 2022 and became required for ethics review from January 2023. The intent is to ensure awareness of and compliance
with the updates made to TCPS2 in 2022, and in particular, ethical considerations for research involving Indigenous Peoples of Canada. As far as I am aware completion of the training is not negotiable and reflects required updates for the ethical and safe
conduct of research, in much the same way as we are required to update health and safety training, or biohazard training every few years to ensure ongoing compliance.
From: Enda Brophy <ebrophy@sfu.ca>
Sent: Tuesday, December 5, 2023 2:44 PM
To: academic-discussion (academic-discussion@sfu.ca) <academic-discussion@sfu.ca>
Subject: DORE demands re: updated TCPS2 tutorial
I’m in the process of making revisions to an ethics application. I am profoundly irked however by the fact that DORE is requiring I take the TCPS 2 tutorial *again* because the content has been updated recently. I imagine that the motives
behind this request are noble in wanting us to be as up to date as possible in the area of research ethics, but this demand is also utterly disrespectful of our time as faculty since as many of you will know from (painful) experience it takes roughly four
hours of time to complete the tutorial. Presumably, unless the content has been overhauled completely, I am being asked to complete much if not most of a tutorial that I’ve already completed.
Not only is this request disrespectful of our time, but it also doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Speed limits may change, but I’m not asked to take my driver’s license exam each time this happens. Laws change and medical knowledge advances,
but we don’t ask lawyers to take the bar exam again or doctors to take their courses in medical school again.
Have others on this list been asked to take the tutorial again? If so, have you taken it? And if so, how different was the content?
I’ve sent a note to DORE asking for clarification, but since this is an issue that will affect many of us I thought I’d share in this forum.
Enda Brophy (he/him)
Associate Professor | School of Communication
Associate | Labour Studies
Simon Fraser University | HC 3559
515 W Hastings St, Vancouver V6B 5K3
E: ebrophy@sfu.ca
Simon Fraser University lies on the unceded territories of the Coast Salish peoples of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), Səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) and Kwikwetlem (kʷikʷəƛ̓əm) Nations.
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