Using muppets to demystify informed consent

Need: Informed consent is a cornerstone of ethical research with human subjects. Knowing how to obtain it in a way that ensures participants have full knowledge of the study's purpose, as well as the expectations, benefits, and risks of participation is critical. Different contexts require tailored approaches to ensure participants have this full knowledge before consenting. Researchers need to come up with strategies to address the unique barriers to obtaining informed consent across contexts. Leveraging multimedia offers advantages to both the participants and the research team to do just this. Most importantly it supports the mission of ethical research that engages participants as active members of the study.

Concept: Researchers conducting an impact evaluation on the Ahlan Simsim project sensed there were gaps between the information they were providing and how it was received by participants while going through the informed consent process. They knew there must be a better way to share the information, while more actively engaging participants. Thus the idea to tap into the affordances of multimedia was born. This storyboard outlines a video that takes us through the challenges researchers face in obtaining informed consent, and offers a possible solution. Designing the storyboard around a researcher's experience helps connect the use of multimedia with a researcher's day to day work.

Learning Theories

Emotional Design

This video utilizes an emotional design by integrating a researcher's lived experience into video's storyboard. Emotional design is defined as "planning and implementation of visual elements in learning material that affect learners' emotions and foster learning" (Um et al., 2012).

With more and more investigation of the role of emotion in learning, scholars extended cognitive theory of multimedia learning theory (CTML) to cognitive affective theory of multimedia learning (CATML) (Moreno, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009; Rey, 2010). CATML bridges emotional and cognitive processes in multimedia learning to incorporate motivational and emotional factors in the cognitive processes for successful information processing. This video ties affective factors, like storytelling, to cognitive processes, like new information around the multimedia approach.