The Ethics of Evaluating Instructional Computing - Informed Consent and Student Obligation - The Research Center on Computing & Society

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Marvin J. Croy

3.3 Informed Consent and Student Obligation

These points lead to the issue of informed consent, on which Moor and Overall disagree. Moor’s negative view of offering informed consent is based on two points. First, it is the instructor’s prerogative to select an instructional technique and a student’s preference is not a deciding factor. Second, curricular and scheduling pressures subvert the process of obtaining freely given consent. Nevertheless, neither of these points seem strong enough to warrant the abandoning of informed consent. First, a student’s desire to avoid being subjected to a particular treatment condition may be not so much a desire to select a preferred instructional technique, but more a desire not to be subjected to “experimental” or unproved practices. This is certainly a different question than that of whether a student’s preference for some instructional technique should be decisive. Normally, the instructor’s reasoned judgment in selecting a suitable technique outweighs a student’s preference. This decision may be both complicated and difficult. One technique, or set of techniques, is often selected for the class as a whole, even though it may benefit some students more than others. Nevertheless, the selection is made on the basis of the welfare of current students, however conceived. But in the case of controlled experiments, students are not assigned treatments on this basis. The conflict between the welfare of current students and that of future students is evident in that the instructor is not choosing a technique for current students with their interests paramount. This is not a standard classroom situation, and a student’s desire to avoid an experiment should not be settled in terms of whose preference is normally decisive. Second, Moor is correct that curricular pressures may undermine informed consent, since a student may not be able to avoid a required course and/or enrolling in other sections of the course may be impossible. If the request for informed consent is genuine, however, these difficulties can be defused. One test of whether that request is genuine consists of how the instructor reacts to the situation in which a student prefers not to take part in the experiment yet wishes to remain in the course and make use of the instructional methods normally available. Students whose preference is denied are not genuinely being asked for their consent. Accommodating this preference may require special provisions, but in most cases it is tantamount to assigning these students to the control group (and may require that their data be ignored). Of course, taking this action can jeopardize the reliability of the study’s findings, but instructors should be prepared to accept this consequence. There is good reason to believe, however, that this consequence will rarely occur. When students are given careful explanations of the purpose and significance of the experiment, their willingness to participate is almost universal.(18)

These views are consistent with the claim that instructors have a responsibility not merely to current students but to future students and to improving instruction as well. This claim provokes a related question. If instructors committed to providing optimum instruction have a responsibility to improve education, do students have an obligation to serve as subjects in controlled studies aimed at such improvements? An affirmative response to this question could be based on two points. First, students do have some obligation to contribute to the efforts and risks taken by previous students who helped to improve the quality of contemporary education. Second, this contribution would be in the form of taking a risk for the sake of future students. This risk involves the potential loss of grade and learning. Moor’s resolution, however, reduces this risk to zero. Consequently, a risk-free means of fulfilling an important obligation has been provided.

A negative response, however, could be based on a denial of each of these points. First, even if students do have an obligation to aid in the improvement of education, it is not clear that this contribution must be made by serving as a subject in a controlled experiment. Many improvements have resulted not from such experiments but rather from less formal, less accurately measured, and more slowly evolving forms of trial and error. Second, it is not clear that Moor’s resolution has in fact provided a risk-free means for students to contribute to improving education. Certainly, a student’s grade is protected, but when students do suffer a loss of learning an additional burden is placed upon them. In order to recoup that loss students must expend additional time and energy on the course. It should not be surprising if students are eager to be compensated for loss of grade but rarely inclined to expend the effort required to recoup loss of learning. In making the choice between receiving less learning or expending more effort, students are in a no-win situation. Whether students will face this choice is of course unknown at the outset of the experiment but its mere potential is enough to show that participating in the study is not a risk-free venture. Consequently, it does not appear that students have an obligation to participate in these studies.(19)

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