Instructions for Accessing the UWTC Human Subjects Pool

The following provides information for UWTC faculty and graduate students (with faculty sponsors) who wish to access subjects through the UWTC Human Subjects Pool. Access may be available for TC researchers who have submitted for approved to the UW Human Subjects Division.

Students who are enrolled in TC classes are automatically enrolled in the UWTC Human Subjects pool, which states that students can be asked to participate in up to two hours of experimental work per quarter. The number of classes participating and the number of students in each class varies from quarter to quarter.

To request access to the human subject pool:

First:

  1. Read the UWTC Human Subjects Pool Web page so that you to understand that students in TC classes have three ways (see below) in which they can fulfill part of their class participation requirement.
  2. Submit your Human Subjects Application either to the UWTC Human Subjects Review Committee (UWTC-HSRC) ( for exempt research), or to the UW-HSRC for Minimal Risk or Full Review research studies. See the UWTC page for researchers for more information.

Then:

  1. Fill out a request to use the Human Subjects Pool and submit two print copies to Jennifer Turns' mailbox in 14 Loew Hall and one electronic copy (the electronic copy may be lacking the signatures) via email to Dr. Jennifer Turns ( This e-mail address is being protected from spambots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it ). You will hear back from Karen Kasonic or Jennifer about pool availability. **Any application for use of the pool needs to be submitted at least three weeks before the beginning of the quarter in which you wish to access subjects. The coordinator will tell you which classes you may access and when you may recruit students. Before putting you into contact with the class instructors, she will ask for a copy of your approved UW Human Subjects form.**
  2. After you have accessed subjects in the pool, please fill out a Status Report within 30 days of completing your study and send it as a Word doc to Jennifer Turns by email. Jennifer collects the forms submitted by TC researchers on their experiences with the pool and submits one report annually to the UW-HSRC to represent the totality of work done with the pool.

Ways that Students in the Pool Can Participate:

If asked to participate in an experiment, students may:

  1. Participate in an experiment.
  2. Withdraw from an experiment at any point and still be fulfill the class participation requirement.
  3. Write a 2-page paper on a topic suggested by the course instructors.

Recruiting Students:

After receiving permission from Karen or Jennifer, and after receiving UW Human Subjects approval, do the following.

  1. For in-person studies, develop a sign-up sheet that you can pass around in class--you must attend the class and offer students the opportunity to sign up--it is a conflict of interest to have the instructor do this.
    • Post this form outside your office so that additional students can sign up and so that students can cancel or reschedule appointments.
    • Hand-out consent forms and collect them after they are signed.
    • Construct a list of participants from the consent forms you develop and have participants sign.
  2. For some online studies, in which you create a flyer asking students of their willingness to participate remotely from the computer of their choice, you can give the course instructors the flyer to hand out.
  3. Give a copy of the list of participating students to the relevant instructors of the classes, so they will know which students must fulfill alternative course participation requirements.

Students are volunteering to be subjects when they sign up for an experiment, and you are promising to be present at the assigned times; hence, the subjects and you have a mutual contract with each other and an obligation to be present at the appointed time. If you are absent, students will wait 10 minutes after the time the experiment was supposed to begin. The students need not agree to participate at another time in order to fulfill the course requirement.

You have an obligation to keep each student's data confidential unless the student gives explicit written authorization to release the data. If on the Human Subjects Application and on the Consent Form, you have said that subjects will be anonymous, then you can have no links between study data and subject identity. This is an important part of the ethics of experimentation and the UWTC-HSRC's approval is based on meeting these assumptions.