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VMC Community Code of Conduct

Researchers, students, and educators who wish to become members of the VMC Community and to use the RUAnalytic tool must agree to abide by the following rules:

  • You are expected to self-govern your use of the collection and the RUAnalytic by adhering to the VMC Community Code of Conduct. VMC Administrators reserve the right to review any analytic in order to investigate a complaint that the Code of Conduct has been breached.
  • All discussion will be professional and conscientious. Comments may be reviewed by VMC Administrators before or after publication. Please use discussion tools to collaborate meaningfully. Your profile will be linked to all comments so that others in the conversation can better understand your professional perspective. Comments that do not constitute respectful communication, from the VMC Administrators’ perspective, will result in the discussion being embargoed from view.
  • All articles using VMC or RUAnalytic tool data will appropriately cite references to videos or analytics following APA guidelines for VMC resources.
  • VMC videos are made available for viewing and for use in the RUAnalytic tool as streaming media. No videos may be downloaded to a desktop, server or other location without the written permission of the collection owners.
  • As an RUAnalytic tool user, you may use the RUAnalytic tool to create clips and annotate existing video data included in the archives and to share the results of this work via a non-permanent URL. Analytics may be submitted to the VMC Administrators for peer review and publication in the VMC Community portal. Analytics that are published in the VMC portal will receive DOIs and will be publicly available for long term access for others.
  • No VMC materials may be used for commercial purposes without the written permission of the collection owners, which may be requested at the contact us link. Commercial use is use primarily intended for commercial advantage or monetary compensation. If you are in doubt whether your intended use is commercial, please contact us. VMC Administrators reserve the right to make final decisions on whether uses are considered commercial or non-commercial.

The VMC Code of Conduct incorporates the Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct Including 2010 Amendments of the American Psychological Association, as supplemented by the five principles of the VMC Code of Ethics, below. You are asked to read the APA Code of Ethics, linked by reference, before reading the VMC Code of Ethics. Both codes of ethics apply to VMC learning community participation, VMC materials use, and use of the RUAnalytic tool.


VMC Code of Ethics

As is true with any observational video collection, the need to prevent potential misuse or misinterpretation of data is a responsibility shared by all members of the user community. This brief Code of Ethics, as well as the full APA Code of Ethics as earlier referenced, is intended to prevent possible misuse by providing basic guidelines for conduct. We expect our members to honor this code of ethics. If you are found to be in violation of the code of ethics your access to the RUAnalytic tool and video data will be revoked and your existing analytic collection will be permanently deleted.

5 Basic Principles*

1. Attribution for Contributors: The researchers of the VMC have worked for many years to collect, edit, and post the video data you will use as you create analytics. In respect of this work and collaborative mission, you will carefully cite your sources. Guidance on APA citation for videos and analytics are provided at the VMC site.

2. Respect for Participants: Throughout 20+ years of longitudinal video collection, hundreds of students have been captured in VMC footage, including video data of children. In your application for VMC community membership, you will note if you have received IRB certification for the study of human subjects. This certification helps to establish your credibility as a user, though it is not a mandatory requirement for participation.

For all users, no personal characterizations or criticisms about students will be incorporated in analytics or comments about analytics or in any scholarly publication or presentation based on the VMC video and analytic data. The longitudinal data in this resource allows us to track the development of mathematical understanding for individual students, but it will not be used to make statements about a student’s “verbal facility, physical appearance, or social skills” in analytics or comments about analytics or in any scholarly publication or presentation based on the VMC video and analytic data.

In general, consider how your analysis and contribution is contributing to the VMC mission to “make new discoveries in math education and transform mathematics research, teaching and learning.” Your contribution should support this mission. If any activity or scholarly work by a community participant does not support this mission, or is deemed unprofessional, or is in any way belittling to a participant or group of participants, the contribution will not be considered for publication at the portal and will be removed from private workspace, and the participant’s membership in the community will be revoked.

3. Confidentiality: Community participants agree not to include in any analytics or other publications personal data about student participants beyond supplied metadata, and not to make any effort to discover the identity or any personal or demographic data about student participants through information sources at the VMC portal or outside the portal. Considerable care must be taken to maintain the privacy of the students participating in the many studies that constitute the VMC video collection to mitigate the risk that their right to the privacy of their personal identity is breached.

If you personally know a student and wish to create an analytic or reference that includes the student’s image, voice, or likeness in a scholarly publication or presentation, you are required to solicit a pre-publication review of your scholarly work to ensure that the privacy of the personal identity of the student(s) is maintained. This review is separate from peer review for analytic publication, where the scholarly merits of the analytic will be determined through the peer review process.

This professional review is not meant to be an added obstacle to your work with the RUAnalytic tool. Rather, it is intended to ensure that the privacy of student participants remains paramount in any publication process.

4. Acceptance of Professional Review: RUAnalytic tool users are strongly encouraged to submit any analytics that they believe add to the public discourse for publication as a scholarly resource in the VMC. A published analytic has a permanent DOI associated and thus can be referenced and linked for use in other publications, such as books, articles and dissertations. There is no permanent way to identify an analytic in the workspace without publication. Authors acknowledge that with publication that they are contributing to ongoing scholarly communication and that others may build upon their research. Analytics can be embargoed from public access at the author(s)’s request until publication of a related resource, such as a dissertation, book or article that references and links to the analytic.

In support of the collaborative mission to advance mathematics teaching, research, and learning, the VMC has established a review committee charged with approving all analytics and discussions that are submitted for open access via publication in the VMC. The review committee will present the analytic creator(s) with comments intended to guide the creation of an acceptable analytic, similar to standard peer review practices, before official publication. All final edits and adjustments must also be approved by the review committee. This professional review is not meant to be an added obstacle to your work with the RUAnalytic tool. Rather, it is intended to ensure a scholarly work of enduring value that contributes substantively to education and student learning research.

5. Sanctions: If any of your contributions are found to violate the VMC Code of Conduct or do not align with the VMC mission, the VMC Administrators maintain the right to refuse publication of your contribution, where a contribution may consist of an analytic, whether private or published at the website as well as comments to an analytic created by yourself or another. In addition, your user account may be closed.

This project is supported by the National Science Foundation through grant award # DRL-0822204 and grant award # EXP-1217087. The views expressed here are those of the participating researchers and not necessarily those of the NSF.

* The five principles of the VMC Code of Ethics are derived from the TalkBack Code of Ethics referenced below.


References

(2013, December 7). Creative Commons Licenses. Retrieved from http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/.

American Psychological Association. (2014). Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct Including 2010 Amendments. Retrieved from http://www.apa.org/ethics/code/index.aspx.

MacWhinney, B. (2013, November 7). Usage Ground Rules. Retrieved from http://talkbank.org/share/.

MacWhinney, B. (2013, November 7). TalkBack Code of Ethics. Retrieved from http://talkbank.org/share/ethics.html.

Ready to join us? Please submit a VMC Community Application Form