RESEARCH CONSENT FORM

  • Study Title: FRONTIERS: Fostering Software Engineering Competence through Valid, Reliable, Practical and Just Assessments of Individual Contributions to Team Projects
  • Principal Investigator: Chris Hundhausen
  • Study team: Kevin Buffardi (Chico State University), Phillip Conrad (University of California Santa Barbara), Olusola Adesope (Washington State University)
  • Sponsor: National Science Foundation
  • Version: 1.0

This study was reviewed by the Institutional Review Board of UC Santa Barbara as protocol 10-24-0101 and determined to be Exempt from the Federal Regulations at 45 CFR 46.104(d).

We are inviting you to take part in a research study.

Purpose

This purpose of this study is to investigate how to help students produce higher quality software engineering artifacts (commits, issues, pull requests, code reviews) so that they are better prepared for the software profession. You are being asked to take part because you are at least 18 years of age and enrolled in a computer science course being considered by this study.

Voluntary

You do not have to be in the study if you do not want to. You can also decide to be in the study now and change your mind later.

Activities

The study activities include

  • During the first week of academic term, you will be asked to complete an online pre- survey to elicit demographic and attitudinal data relevant to the study’s dependent measures. This survey will take approximately 15-20 minutes to complete. Note that you will complete this pre-survey for course credit regardless of whether you agree to participate in the study.
  • During the entire academic term, all students in the course will participate in regular course activities assigned by the course instructor.
  • During the last week of academic term, all students will be asked to complete an online post-survey to elicit attitudinal data relevant to the study’s dependent measures as well as your impressions about participating in certain course activities.
  • Optionally, you may elect to participate in a 15-30 minute post-interview via Zoom. An invitation to participate in this interview will be included in the post-survey.

What information will be provided to the researchers if I participate in this study?

If you agree to participate in this study, your instructor will release to the researchers your course grades, activities, and deliverables, such as:

  • Presurvey and postsurvey data on your demographics and attitudes.
  • Results of your project team’s peer evaluation surveys.
  • Log data from Github on your software development processes, including commits, issues, pull requests, and code reviews
  • Transcripts of your online chats from your team’s chat channel
  • Your course grades
  • Deliverables you submitted for the team software development project

Time

Your participation in this study will not require any time beyond the time you would normally spend taking the course in which you are enrolled.

Risks

Participating in this study will not incur any risks or discomforts beyond those you may experience while interacting with a computer to complete web development tasks.

Benefits

This study is not designed to benefit you directly. However, the study’s pedagogical approach may help you to construct, assess, and reflect on high-quality software engineering artifacts, thus helping to prepare you for the software profession.

Confidentiality

The data collected in this study will be stored on secure servers accessible only to the researchers. The data will be kept confidential to the extent allowed by federal and state law. To protect participant identities, we will create a key that maps participants’ names to anonymous codes. Prior to analyzing study data, we will use that key to map the data to the anonymous codes. The key will be destroyed within three years following the end of the academic term in which the data is collected.

The results of this study may be published or presented at professional meetings. In these publications and presentations, we will most often present aggregate results. In cases where we refer to the data of individual participants, we will use pseudonyms and obfuscate any contextual information that might be used to link the data to participant identities.

Study contacts

We would like you to ask us questions if there is anything about the study that you do not understand. You can call us at 541-737-8870 or email us at chris.hundhausen@oregonstate.edu.

You can also contact the Human Research Protection Program with any concerns that you have about your rights or welfare as a study participant. This office can be reached at (541) 737-8008 or by email at IRB@oregonstate.edu.

You may also contact the UCSB Human Subjects Committee Coordinator at: (805) 893-3807; (805) 893-2611 (fax); or at hsc@research.ucsb.edu

How do I opt-in or opt-out?

You will be asked to fill out a pre- and post- survey as homework assignments in this course.

As part of the pre-survey, you will be asked whether you consent to participate in the research.

While filling out the survey is required, agreeing to participate in the research is not required to get credit for the assignment.