Care-full and reproducible research: Teaching research skills and ethics to undergraduate researchers using critical replication studies

Abstract

Course-based replication studies facilitate broad student participation in science, allowing early-career researchers a direct and fast route to impactful research questions and high-quality methods and analyses. They also provide students opportunities for exciting hands-on experience engaging with contemporary research questions as both theorists and experimentalists. However, reproducibility requires thoughtful attention to generalizability, and new scholars must be taught to critically consider study motivations, assumptions and goals. Teaching reproducibility in this way promotes public trust in science as well as productive skepticism. We discuss a reproducibility-focused undergraduate course where the goal is to provide a meaningful, authentic, and responsible research experience for students. While a heavy emphasis on replication can lead to an uncritical reproduction of harmful science, the present course emphasizes a more inclusive approach to knowledge production, where research skills development is inseparable from education on responsible conduct of research, social justice, and open science values and practices. We cover topics including: selecting a study for replication, intentional development of students’ collaboration skills, finding a balance between replication and extension, students’ reflexivity practice and positionality, human participants considerations, the responsible dissemination of students’ research, course learning outcomes and assessment, and research mentoring “at scale.”