PAASP developed a unique online course on Good Research Practices.

Beta testing is concluded and the updated course will be released soon. Please stay tuned!

Course Description

The course aims to teach students, postdocs and other early-career professionals a set of behaviors known as Good Research Practice that help us to:

• Design experiments that can deliver robust and reliable data;
• Protect our data by maintaining records that are secure and traceable;
• Communicate our results in a transparent fashion so that they can be replicated with confidence.
• The course consists of 7 lessons with a total of 5 hours (equivalent to 7 academic hours of 45 minutes) recorded presentations on research rigor, measures against bias, data integrity and study design.
• Together with the reading material, homework and quizzes, the course is estimated to take around 14 hours.

Course Outline

Lesson 1 – Why are we talking about research rigor?

Essential reading

• Three papers

Lectures

• Evidence for lack of rigor in research
• Causes of lack of rigor in research (two parts)
• Impact of lack of rigor in research

Assignments

• Two mini-quizzes
• One survey
• One homework task

Lesson 2 – Generating evidence

Essential reading

• Four papers

Lectures

• Lessons from evidence-based medicine
• Risks of bias
• Knowledge claiming research
• Systematic reviews

Assignments

• One mini-quiz
• Two feedback tasks
• One homework task

Lesson 3 – Study design

Essential reading

• Three papers
• General information on study protocols (study plans)

Lectures

• Pre-specification
• Preregistration
• Randomization (three parts)
• Blinding (two parts)
• Sample size and power (three parts)

Assignments

• Four mini-quizzes
• Four feedback tasks
• One homework task

Lesson 4 – Statistics

Essential reading

• One paper

Lectures

• What is statistics all about?
• More on p-values
• False Discovery Rate

Assignments

• Three mini-quizzes

Lesson 5 – Data integrity

Essential reading

• Two papers

Lectures

• Introduction to data integrity
• ALCOA
• FAIR
• Data integrity in practice

Assignments

• Four mini-quizzes

Lesson 6 – Reporting

Essential reading

• Two papers

Lectures

• Visualization
• Negative results
• Experimental units
• Reporting standards (two parts)

Assignments

• Four quizzes

Lesson 7 – Open science

Lectures

• Data and resource sharing
• Open access publications
• Conflict of interest

Assignments

• Three quizzes

Instructor Information and Communication

Course Instructors

The course was developed by an international team representing PAASP network members in Germany, Poland, United Kingdom, and the United States.

Course Help

To ask a question, please reach out to the course staff via email info@paasp.net.

Course Materials and Technical Requirements

Materials

All essential and most of the recommended reading material is open-access and can be freely used (viewed online or downloaded for offline use). All recorded presentations are available directly via the training platform.

Technical Requirements

This course is built on a Learning Management System called LearnDash.

For best performance, the training platform should be used on the current or previous major releases of Chrome, Firefox, Edge, or Safari run on desktops, laptops or tablets with Windows, MacOS, Linux, iOS, Android as operating system. Your computer operating system should be kept up to date with the latest recommended security updates and upgrades.

Technical Support

If you’re having technical difficulties, please alert the PAASP helpdesk immediately by sending an email message to info@paasp.net.

End of Course Feedback and Certificate

PAASP is committed to improving our online courses and instruction.

Once you have completed the course, you will receive a link to a survey with a few questions about your experience with the course. We will greatly appreciate any feedback you may provide as it will help us improve the course in both form and content.

Please indicate your name, ORCID number and email address at the start of the survey. This will allow us to see when you have completed the survey so that we can prepare and email you the certificate confirming the successful completion of the course. This certificate will display your name as well as the ORCID number.