HUMAN SUBJECTS E-NEWSLETTER

My employer Purdue's Office of Research Administration obtained an NIH grant for development of various kinds of educational materials involving human subjects used in research. One of these materials was an e-newsletter. In March of 2003 we launched a quarterly e-newsletter IRB News to keep researchers uptodate on regulations for use of human subjects. The challenge was one of motivation - we hoped that by making IRB News a short html email-based, rather than print-based newsletter, with readable screen content, convenient navigation, and easy subscription features - yet also easy to print and to read in straight text email clients and browsers - that we could retain and grow our readership.

The other main challenge was coming up with a way to allow ORA staff to work collaboratively on this e-newsletter with as little HTML knowledge as possible.

After consulting with a good friend and expert in print-based newsletter design and doing some web research and going through some trial and error, I eventually came up with two-article, three-article, four-article, and five-article email templates which contain the standing ezine elements. Users simply click on these as .eml files which will open in Outlook Express (the preferable email client to work in, since it has an email tab, an html tab, and a preview tab), forward it to themselves, create the e-newsletter, and then distribute it through Purdue's Majordomo list server. The links are all pre-set.

My final task was to design a pamphlet to give some instruction to ORA staff on how to use the email templates and how to administer and maintain the Majordomo listserve. These instructions will be formatively evaluated when ORA puts out it's third official newsletter in October 2003.

In the e-newsletter, we offer people an easy way to subscribe and unsubscribe to the ezine either through JavaScript buttons or through a simple mailto url. We have tested the template in straight text and more enhanced email clients and browsers. We also archive the newsletters on Purdue's website so that people can also choose to read them in their browsers and access previous versions.

For information on how to compose and send html email, check out the following links:

All About HTML Email
Introduction to HTML Email
HTML Email: Text Font Readability Study
Sending HTML Email at Dreamweaver FAQ.com