Minerva faculty and staff are not required to communicate with the IRB about typical "internal" education research that is intended ONLY for improving Minerva. This includes:

• Course surveys (e.g., asking all the students in a course to fill out survey questions like "Reflect on how you are engaging with this course. What has been most helpful for your learning in this class so far?")
• Data analysis on information available to an individual within Forum and other MU information systems (e.g., an instructor rank-orders their own class sessions by difficulty and sees how that relates to total student talk time, to see if more difficult sessions have less student talk time)
• Collection of anecdotes to help inform a decision (e.g., before changing a policy, a decision-maker asks several students for their input)

Notice that all of the above examples are for internal use only--the information will not be used to make general conclusions outside of Minerva and shared outside of Minerva.

Reasons to communicate with the IRB about educational research include, but are not limited to:

• You want to have official review by the IRB so that you can share information outside of Minerva. Examples include if you might want to present at a conference, publish a blog post, or submit a manuscript to an academic journal.
• You are doing anything that could have any level of harm. Examples include deception in a survey, having undergraduates assist with your research and thus have access to information about their peers, or doing some sort of educational intervention in which some students might have worse outcomes than others because one intervention is more effective than others.
• You are doing something "unusual" that is not related to your typical job description. Note that all of the examples in the first section (course surveys, analyzing data about your own course, and asking students for feedback on a potential policy change) are all things that are directly related to a person's job at Minerva. Imagine, in contrast, that an instructor was interested in doing something very different (e.g., surveying students about impressions of the residences--but not for anything related to what the instructor does at Minerva)--this would be worth checking with the IRB.
• You want to consult with the IRB! As with all other situations, Minervans are welcome to consult with the IRB even when policies do not require them to!

If you need to consult with the IRB (or want to), and the outcome is submitting an official protocol, then we strive to process these as quickly as possible and support you as much as possible in doing so. The key thing is that you contact us to get the conversation started as soon as you know interaction with the IRB is required/desired, so that we have the widest possible set of options available.