Chien Chou
National Chiao Tung University, Taiwan

Chair Professor, Graduate Institute of Education/Center for Teacher Education
Chairperson of Research Ethics Committee for Human Subject Protection
Director of Office of Academic Ethics and Research Integrity

National Chiao Tung University in Hsinchu, Taiwan

Dr. Chou is currently a chair professor at Graduate Institute of Education/Center for Teacher Education, the chairperson of Research Ethics Committee for Human Subject Protection, and the director of Office of Academic Ethics and Research Integrity of National Chiao Tung University in Hsinchu, Taiwan.  Dr. Chou’s research interests include elearning, information literacy and ethics, and research ethics.  Her work has been published in a variety of domestic and international prestigious journals.  She has been granted the national project of Education and Implementation Mechanism of Research Ethics in Taiwan’s Higher Education (website: http://ethics.nctu.edu.tw/) by Ministry of Education since 2011.  Currently she also helps Taiwan Ministry of Science and Technology oversee the development of intramural research ethics program of all universities and research institutes in Taiwan.

Research Ethics Education in Taiwan: Challenges and Solutions

In the past, there was no comprehensive and systematic research ethics training mandatory for all graduate students in Taiwan.  Research ethics was usually taught through individual faculty’s mentoring or department-based or school-based conferences, seminars and workshops.  To foster research ethics in academics and professionalism and to build up a systematic research ethics education mechanism, the national project of Education and Implementation Mechanism of Research Ethics in Taiwan’s Higher Education (http://ethics.nctu.edu.tw/) by Ministry of Education was launched in 2014.  By 2018, about 200,000 users from more than 248 Taiwanese universities and research institutions have registered to this online education system.

During these years, this project has developed high-quality online instructions for a variety of disciplines.  This project has also initiated seminars, workshops as well as incoming/outgoing academic visits to be in line with the international scientific communities and to show the effort that Taiwan continues to act as a reliable and trustworthy research partner.  Moreover, this project has been dedicated to the creation of ethical atmosphere of academics and professionalism among laboratories and classrooms, in the hope that students and scientists have more opportunities to learn the nature of scientific research anew so that the concept in fostering and mentoring “tomorrow’s scientists” could be built.

This talk will share the accomplishment and experience by comparing before and after the implementation of this project, and discuss the future project development and promotion directions.  Challenges faced would be addressed and the solutions would be presented.