Unit Synopsis
In this unit, you will study the importance of ethical guidelines governing the conduct of any research project and understand the principles that underpin these guidelines. You will learn why we need ethical guidelines by exploring previous research projects that did not respect the rights of those who were being researched. You will also study Australia’s current ethical guidelines and employ these to complete a mock ethics application.
Details
| Level | Postgraduate |
|---|---|
| Unit Level | 9 |
| Credit Points | 6 |
| Student Contribution Band | SCA Band 1 |
| Fraction of Full-Time Student Load | 0.125 |
| Pre-requisites or Co-requisites |
Students must be enrolled in CL22 Master of Clinical Nursing to undertake this unit. Co-requisites: NURS20168. Pre-requisites: NURS20167. Important note: Students enrolled in a subsequent unit who failed their pre-requisite unit, should drop the subsequent unit before the census date or within 10 working days of Fail grade notification. Students who do not drop the unit in this timeframe cannot later drop the unit without academic and financial liability. See details in the Assessment Policy and Procedure (Higher Education Coursework). |
| Class Timetable | View Unit Timetable |
| Residential School | No Residential School |
Unit Availabilities from Term 1 - 2026
Term 1 - 2026 Profile
Attendance Requirements
All on-campus students are expected to attend scheduled classes - in some units, these classes are identified as a mandatory (pass/fail) component and attendance is compulsory. International students, on a student visa, must maintain a full time study load and meet both attendance and academic progress requirements in each study period (satisfactory attendance for International students is defined as maintaining at least an 80% attendance record).
Recommended Student Time Commitment
Each 6-credit Postgraduate unit at CQUniversity requires an overall time commitment of an average of 12.5 hours of study per week, making a total of 150 hours for the unit.
Assessment Tasks
| Assessment Task | Weighting |
|---|---|
| 1. Written Assessment | 40% |
| 2. Written Assessment | 60% |
This is a graded unit: your overall grade will be calculated from the marks or grades for each assessment task, based on the relative weightings shown in the table above. You must obtain an overall mark for the unit of at least 50%, or an overall grade of ‘pass’ in order to pass the unit. If any ‘pass/fail’ tasks are shown in the table above they must also be completed successfully (‘pass’ grade). You must also meet any minimum mark requirements specified for a particular assessment task, as detailed in the ‘assessment task’ section (note that in some instances, the minimum mark for a task may be greater than 50%).
Past Exams
All University policies are available on the Policy web site, however you may wish to directly view the following policies below.
This list is not an exhaustive list of all University policies. The full list of policies are available on the Policy web site .
Term 1 - 2024 : The overall satisfaction for students in the last offering of this course was 0.00% (`Agree` and `Strongly Agree` responses), based on a 16.67% response rate.
Feedback, Recommendations and Responses
Every unit is reviewed for enhancement each year. At the most recent review, the following staff and student feedback items were identified and recommendations were made.
Source: Discussion with student
This unit overlaps with NURS20168 which is usually undertaken concurrently.
This unit will be rewritten to ensure less overlap of unit content and scaffolded learning.
Unit rewritten and each week is centred on an aspect of the research proposal or ethics submission to align knowledge requirement and learning with the practical application of completing the submission.
Source: Discussion with student.
Individual student-focused teaching helped to achieve a great outcome. Discussions with the unit coordinator were necessary to devise a research question for Assessment 1 (Research Proposal).
Future students will be encouraged at the beginning of the term to regularly engage with the learning content and the unit coordinator so that a viable research question and project can be proposed in Assessment 1.
Despite repeated attempts to encourage early engagement, students were slow to commence looking at Moodle. An additional Zoom was created and students were encouraged to meet with the Unit Coordinator as required outside scheduled Zoom times.
Source: student discussions
Students found the unit difficult and did not realise it would be so time consuming
Prepare students for the increased complexity of this unit in NURS20167 Literature Review. Continue to recommend early engagement and email students in the first weeks of Term to prepare them.
In Progress
On successful completion of this unit, you will be able to:
- Analyse a research project to assess its alignment with contemporary ethical conduct expectations.
- Demonstrate the application of ethical research principles in practice.
There are no learning outcomes linked to external accreditation for this unit.
| Assessment Tasks | Learning Outcomes | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | |
| 1 - Written Assessment | • | |
| 2 - Written Assessment | • | |
| Graduate Attributes | Learning Outcomes | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | |
| 1 - Knowledge | • • | • |
| 2 - Communication | • | • |
| 3 - Cognitive, technical and creative skills | • | • |
| 4 - Research | • | |
| 5 - Self-management | • | • |
| 6 - Ethical and Professional Responsibility | • | • |
| 7 - Leadership | • | • |
| 8 - Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Cultures | • | • |
| Assessment Tasks | Graduate Attributes | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 8 | |