To-do list for undergrad RAs before they can be cleared to run studies within the lab.
CITI Training
In order to conduct any research study, any potential researcher must first complete CITI training. CITI stands for Collaborative Institutional Training Initiative and is a training program designed to give researchers the tools and information needed to conduct research. In order to conduct studies, the basic course for Group 2(Social/behavioral research investigators and key personnel) must be completed.
In order to complete CITI training, visit the CITI website (https://www.citiprogram.org/), click on "Register," enter "University of Nebraska - Lincoln" under search for organisation affiliation, and follow the rest of the registration steps. Once logged in to your account, add the course Group 2 Social / Behavioral Research Investigators and Key Personnel. You must complete all of the required modules to get this certificate.
Be careful that you do not accidentally sign up for the review course instead of the basic course. In the review course, modules contain condensed information with links at the top to the full page of information, and the quizzes at the end usually only have two questions instead of more.
Once you have completed all required modules, you will get a completion report, which can be saved as a PDF file. Send a copy of this PDF to either Dr. Johnson or the lab manager, so they can in turn forward it to the appropriate people to get you approved to run studies.
Shared calendar access
The RAP Lab is organized on a shared Google account calendar. Once RAs are established and running studies mostly independently, they will be given access to the RAP Lab calendar. The calendar has 5 sub-calendars:
- RAP Lab calendar - for general info e.g. room bookings, general lab events, lab meetings etc.
- RAP People calendar - where part-time members of the lab (RAs, interns etc.) can post their timings for each specific day that they are coming in. This helps us to keep track of everyone and prevent any mix ups in the schedule.
- RAP Behavior calendar - should contain information for individual study sessions for behavioral studies
- RAP EEG calendar - should contain information for individual study sessions for EEG studies
- RAP fMRI calendar - should contain information for individual study sessions for fMRI studies
Establish schedule
We would like for undergraduate RAs to have relatively regular schedules from week to week. Depending on the RAs class schedules etc, these will be set with Dr. Johnson and the lab manager so that participants can be scheduled for appropriate times.
Get added to IRB
Once CITI training has been complete and an RA has been assigned a study, they must be added to the IRB protocol for that study in order to collect data. This has to be done by Dr. Johnson.
Learn the Lab
Everyone in this lab has a workspace in the bullpen on floor B of CB3 and Matt's Office is the closest to the bullpen.
The lab lockers are numbers 202 and 203 in the CB3 B-floor bullpen. The codes to unlock them are with Dr. Johnson and the lab manager, and will be given to RAs when they are ready to run studies by themselves. Laptops, study forms, and cash boxes are kept in lab lockers.
RAs will familiarize themselves then with the areas where they will conduct studies, be that B71, the EEG suite, or the fMRI suite. Knowledge of these areas will help once the RA starts running experiments.