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SONA Summer 2021 Participant Instructions
SONA Summer 2021 Participant Instructions
**Summer 2021**
All crediting is done electronically. Instructors will receive an email report of the total credits you applied to
their classes at the end of each semester.
You will also be asked to choose the courses you are currently enrolled in (multiple courses may be
selected by holding down the CTRL key (on a PC) or the Apple key (on a Mac) while clicking on the
desired course names. If you cannot find your course listed, please notify the Sona Admin at
uh.sona@gmail.com. Generally all courses should already be listed, but errors can happen.
Individual instructors set their own extra credit policies. Just because you see a class listed on Sona DOES
NOT mean your instructor will give you extra credit. When you sign up for a study, you will be asked which
class you would like to apply the credit towards. Make sure you know whether research participation credit
is available in your courses, and if so, how much. Sona does not know how many credits each instructor
allows. It is your responsibility to be aware of the above.
---- USING SONA ----
At the top of the page, you will notice a link that will return you to this Home page. You will notice links to
Studies, your Schedule/Credits, your Profile, the FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions), and a link to Logout.
ALWAYS LOG OUT when done! There is an automatic logout for inactivity, but this is not fail-safe. Be
sure you log out, especially when using a public terminal, to prevent others from accessing your records.
Study Sign-Up
After clicking “Study Sign-Up,” or the Studies link at the top of the page, you may view studies and sign up
for those that interest you and where you meet any special requirements. You may cancel your sign-up
through the system as well.
Studies that currently have available participation times (timeslots) will have “TIMESLOTS AVAILABLE”
listed next to the name of the study. If no studies have available timeslots, you may want to login to the
system a few days later to see if new timeslots have been added.
Some studies are two-part studies, where you must sign up for both parts of the study at once, and the two
parts must be scheduled a certain number of days apart. These studies will be clearly marked.
Some studies may be online survey studies. There are two types of online studies – ones that are hosted
internally on Sona and ones that are hosted on external websites such as SurveyMonkey or Qualtrics.
Instructions for participating and crediting may differ depending on the researcher. Please read all
instructions carefully or you may risk missing a step that is essential to earning credit for participation.
Click the name of the study to get more information, including available sign-up times. After reading the
experiment parameters and the informed consent information, if you meet the criteria, click the View Time
Slots link at the bottom of the page. Choose a timeslot that is convenient for you, and click Sign Up. You will
be taken to an authorization screen to confirm your selection. After you click Sign Up, you will see
information displayed confirming the time and location of the study you plan to participate in. You will then
receive an email confirmation of your appointment.
To ensure that any absences are counted as excused rather than unexcused, please contact the researcher in
advance to inform them that you will be unable to keep your appointment. If you are unable to inform the
researcher in advance because the absence is due to a situation beyond your control, please contact the
researcher within 3 days with university-approved documentation.
If you earn 3 unexcused absences, you will not be able to sign up for Sona studies for the rest of the
semester.
If you need to change the courses linked to your account, go to My Profile and click Change Courses.
If you belong to one course, the system automatically assigns all your credits to that class.
***For Summer 2021: If you belong to multiple courses, you may reassign a
credit from one course to another only by contacting the Sona Administrator
Errors and bugs are never a desired result of the system, but they do happen. We take these matters seriously
and respond promptly. Please report anything that doesn’t look right to your Sona Administrator. Be
specific in the information you provide: What time was the error noticed? What page is it on, or what page
were you trying to access? What is your browser type? Was there an error code? If so, what was it?
Describe the problem in detail so that your Sona Admin can help you quickly.