R&D is necessarily high risk, high reward, therefore portfolio managers and R&D teams need to identify risks, categorize them and ensure effective mitigation strategies are put into place. The Risk Analysis Tool provides R&D teams support in navigating risk through all stages of the R&D pipeline, including Institutional Review Board (IRB) applications and processes. Edtech projects, which may include Human Factors Research or UX/UI testing, commonly fall outside the scope of traditional IRBs; this Risk Analysis Tool works to ensure ethical considerations are accounted for in traditional and non-traditional R&D. Furthermore, this Risk Analysis Tool is customizable to provide review processes tailored to the needs of the R&D portfolio or organization, such as promoting inclusion, diversity and fairness in your R&D efforts.

Any R&D project or portfolio that handles data is required to comply with federal and state regulations. We build robust, compliant R&D infrastructures that can be centrally managed to securely collect, share, and analyze research data. Each R&D Infrastructure is customized to client needs, but typically consists of a data storage platform, collaboration tools, private virtual networks (VPNs) and custom web applications—built and deployed using cloud or on-prem compute and storage resources. The R&D Infrastructure is designed specifically for education research and development purposes, and its tools are carefully selected to support collaborative research, data security and data privacy.

The New Start Pitch Template is a comprehensive tool that assists researchers and developers in generating a clear vision for their projects, registering hypotheses, and defining a project’s scope. This structured template ensures that every high-level aspect of the project is planned and accounted for, from conceptualization to managing scope during execution. The New Start Pitch also guides researchers and developers in identifying measures of efficacy and success to enhance the precision and accountability of research and development efforts.

Data Management Plans (DMPs) are critical to taking an R&D project from the vision stage to execution. DMPs guide R&D teams in developing a strong risk identification and management process to first and foremost protect students and communities, as well as program/project teams from the reputational and/or fiduciary harm that may arise from data-related incidents. It is important that R&D portfolios have review processes that are transparent, so the program/project teams have clear expectations of what is needed to review projects and manage risk in a timely manner. DMPs operationalize the risk assessment and mitigation process for projects handling children’s data.

Research and Development (“R&D”) conducted in the U.S. is held to a high level of ethical standards, particularly when the R&D includes ‘vulnerable populations’ such as children. SETA-ED exemplifies this high level of ethical rigor in how we support R&D program teams in recruiting and managing their various projects. The purpose of the RDEC Review Process is to provide a streamlined process for selecting and onboarding R&D teams, with the necessary due diligence to ensure that projects are aware of and meeting threshold requirements for ethical research and data protection. This process is aligned to easily accommodate both ‘traditional’ research (appropriate to standard IRBs) and ‘non-traditional’ R&D such as UX/UI and design-based research (which standard IRBs have had a difficult time understanding).

SETA-ED’s team of privacy and legal experts provides national and state-by-state reviews of legislation and policies in place (or upcoming) that may restrict R&D abilities–enabling risk to be adequately approximated and mitigation strategies to be put in place. The state-wide privacy scans connect state laws and regulations with legislative/policy realism due diligence when considering data governance requirements and when assessing new district partners (e.g., polarizing political climates have the potential to impact or limit R&D in certain states/districts).

An extensive Guidebook on How to Conduct Ethical R&D is in the near-term pipeline for publication, with worked examples highlighting every use case encountered by AERDF to-date and how to manage these challenges. The first couple chapters of Guidebook covers the legal precedents for managed research data and projects in education. The rest of the book provides EdTech developers/engineers guidance for developing education products, built with privacy and security by design, and with equity at the center. A chapter emphasizes the benefits of open science practices, and a call to action the field of education R&D as a whole. The book concludes with a chapter outlining recommendations to shift our collective work from incremental R&D to transformative R&D.

Application security and privacy scans of third-party or custom-built applications assess the data collected via the application, assuring both its collection and usage are compliant with legal standards for children's privacy. These scans evaluate whether the application's data handling practices adhere to privacy regulations designed to protect minors. By ensuring legal compliance, these evaluations play a crucial role in safeguarding children's privacy in digital environments.

Inclusive approaches and iterative methods are at the core of education R&D. These approaches do not always align cleanly with conventional definitions of research and can make it difficult to identify when it is necessary to submit an activity for review by an Institutional Review Board (IRB). This decision-making guide recognizes the unique challenges of engaging in inclusive R&D, and thus provides guidance for making such decisions. At SETA-ED, we support traditional research and non-traditional R&D, which includes UX/UI and design-based activities. Traditional research, which employs methods such as surveys, case studies, experimental/intervention, observational research, quantitative research/hypothesis testing, and qualitative research, will follow a path of guidelines to determine if an IRB is needed.

Through ethics seminars and workshops, offered specifically for R&D in education, our team works to align ethical principles and support engagement with priority populations, who have historically been put at risk of harm or excluded from R&D, including Black, Latino, and Indigenous students and students experiencing poverty. This includes a concise but comprehensive course on Research Integrity and Ethics Training (to complement CITI Human Subjects training required for all researchers operating under an IRB). This course covers topics specific to education and student/youth data collection that are not covered by CITI training.

A consent form checklist ensures that all necessary ethical and legal requirements are systematically addressed when federally mandated consenting is required, thus enhancing the integrity of the research process. By providing a clear framework, the checklist helps researchers avoid omissions and ensures participants are fully informed about the study's scope, risks, and benefits. This organized approach not only promotes transparency but also builds trust between researchers and participants, fostering a more ethical and collaborative research environment.

SETA-ED helps teams interpret and implement the ‘research exception’ under FERPA for de-identifying education data. The critical method for viability rests on rigorous de-identification of student data, which is a notoriously difficult process to achieve. SETA-ED works with R&D teams to determine appropriate methods to move from pseudonymization to de-identification, and to ensure that de-identified data meets legal and ethical obligations for publishing data, ensuring viability for sustainable R&D efforts. The SETA-ED team supports R&D teams in implementing these technical methods for accomplishing de-identification at scale.