ORI has updated its interactive videos The Lab and The Research Clinic

The Office of Research Integrity’s goals are to advance research integrity, protect Public Health Service-funded research, and build and support research integrity communities. As part of these efforts, ORI has long supported the development of educational materials to help foster an environment of research integrity and promote the responsible conduct of research (RCR).  

A prominent and popular educational program are ORI’s interactive videos. ORI first released The Lab in 2011, which allows individuals to learn about research integrity by taking on the roles of a graduate student, postdoctoral fellow, principal investigator, or a research integrity officer and making decisions for the characters as they go through the storyline. Available publicly on ORI’s website, The Lab is a highly effective educational tool and is used approximately 30,000 times annually.

To expand upon this series, ORI released The Research Clinic in 2014, a second interactive video to educate individuals about research integrity issues that may be encountered in a clinical and behavioral research setting. This video enables participants to take on the roles of a Principal Investigator, Clinical Research Coordinator, Research Assistant, and IRB Chairperson and make decisions for them throughout the storyline. Also available publicly on ORI’s website, The Research Clinic is accessed approximately 20,000 times annually. 

The purpose of updating ORI’s interactive videos The Lab and The Research Clinic is to better reflect current workplace environments and concerns, including issues related to diversity, equity, and inclusion in workplace settings. The Lab and The Research Clinic, while still very popular, are now over a decade old. To ensure quality resources for our community members, ORI decided to update The Lab and The Research Clinic to better reflect current standards of appropriate workplace behavior in research settings.

New Updates with Teachable Moments

For the thousands of users in the U.S. and abroad, ORI updated these videos in order to make them more relevant to a modern audience. Specifically, ORI modified scenes from the original movies to highlight them as teachable moments. These teachable moments use pop-ups, voiceovers, and teaching text to offer additional information about issues such as harassment, unconscious bias, microaggressions, racism, workplace culture, emotional health, and more.

Since these videos were first published, ORI received feedback from users and stakeholders about how to improve these educational resources. ORI listened to feedback about the original Lab and Research Clinic videos individuals and institutions provided over the years and made many of the updates in response so that the videos are more consistent and responsive to the current research environment and workplace.

Improving the Responsible Conduct of Research

The updated videos are intended to present information in a fun, choose-your-path style of video that makes it engaging for the learner. They use a variety of teaching methods to insert additional information into the original stories, such as added teaching text, voiceovers, and popups to draw attention to concerns that were not previously addressed in the original scenes, or to new information and resources. ORI invites our learners and educators from across the research community to use the updated videos to enhance their RCR training. 

Recently, ORI Director Sheila Garrity noted “These interactive videos were game changer when they first came out more than a decade ago. People from all over the world use them in their research integrity training.” She added: “We updated The Lab and The Research Clinic to bring these resources into the modern era and ensure they reflect the experience of people out there in the field.”

These updated videos can be used immediately. Find the updated The Lab and The Research Clinic here. ORI looks forward to hearing how its stakeholders are implementing these popular resources in educational settings! 

Stay tuned: ORI is working on sequels to both interactive videos. The sequel to The Lab is slated for release in 2025 and the sequel The Research Clinic is planned to be available in 2026.