Changing an approved WGU project: what the board must clear before it happens
Approval is not a photograph of your intentions; it is permission for one specific arrangement. When the arrangement moves — a second unit joins, a question is added to the survey, someone else starts collecting — the permission has to move with it, and it has to move first. WGU's own policy puts the duty plainly: the board is to be told about needed changes to an approved plan before they are implemented.
Ask first. Anything altering what participants experience, who they are, what is recorded or who handles it goes to the board before it happens. The single exception is a change made at once to protect someone from harm, reported straight afterwards.
What does WGU require when an approved project changes?
WGU's published policy describes what follows approval in two duties. The board keeps watch over approved work, and the person running it must promptly tell the board about unanticipated risks to participants and about the need for changes to approved plans before those changes are put into practice — unless the change is needed to avoid immediate risk to the people involved.
The federal framework the policy sits inside imposes the mirror duty on institutions: procedures must ensure prompt reporting of proposed changes, and ensure that work continues under the terms already approved until the proposed change has been reviewed and approved, except when a change is necessary to eliminate an apparent immediate hazard. Two sentences, one rule. The order is fixed: clearance, then practice.
What the amendment is called and where it is filed depends on WGU's current handbook or IRB portal, and the forms there sit behind university sign-in, so ask your capstone instructor for the current route rather than copying a route someone described in a forum. What does not vary is the sequence.
Which changes need clearance before they happen?
The useful test is not size. It is whether the change alters anything the board weighed when it approved: who is asked, what happens to them, what leaves with you, and who is holding it. Under those criteria a board is checking that risks stay minimised, that selection stays fair, that consent is genuinely sought, and that privacy and confidentiality provisions still hold. Any change that touches one of those has to be cleared.
| The change | Why it matters to the board | Usual handling |
|---|---|---|
| Adding a second unit, clinic or campus | New setting, new gatekeeper, new population; the original authorisation covered neither | Amendment plus the new facility's signed authorisation, before anyone there is approached |
| Adding or rewording survey or interview questions | What participants experience changes, and sensitive items can change the risk picture | Amendment with the revised instrument attached in the exact form participants will see |
| New recruitment route — email list, flyer, staff huddle | Voluntariness and privacy travel with the route; a manager forwarding a link is not neutral | Amendment with the new wording, and a note on who sends it and who cannot see responses |
| Enlarging or narrowing the participant group | Selection fairness and the numbers the board weighed both shift | Amendment stating the new number or criteria and why the change is justified |
| Recording something you had said you would not | Identifiability is the hinge the whole file turns on | Amendment plus reworked consent text and security plan; expect close reading |
| Someone else collecting or handling data | Access, training and the relationship between that person and participants all change | Amendment naming the person, their training record and their access |
| Correcting a typo in a page number | Nothing a participant experiences moves | Usually no amendment; keep the corrected version filed with your records |
Reviewers are allowed to handle small changes lightly. The federal rules let minor changes to already approved work be reviewed by an expedited procedure — the chair or an experienced reviewer designated from the board, who can approve but cannot disapprove. That is a route through the board, not a route around it, and whether a change is minor is the reviewer's call rather than yours.
What is the immediate-hazard exception, and how narrow is it?
Narrow. The exception exists so that nobody has to watch a person be harmed while a form is being processed: a change may be made without prior approval when it is necessary to eliminate an apparent immediate hazard. The test is immediacy and harm, not urgency of any other kind. A recruitment window closing, a term ending, a manager going on leave — none of these is a hazard, and all of them are the situations in which people are tempted to reach for this clause.
When the exception genuinely applies, the sequence is: act to protect the person, then report to the board at once and describe what was changed and why. Expect the board to treat the report seriously; a change made under this clause usually needs to be reviewed afterwards so that the approved arrangement and the real one match again.
What does an amendment file actually contain?
A board reviewing a change is asking three questions: what is different, why, and does anything that protected participants weaken as a result. An amendment that answers those in order is short and easy to approve.
- The change, stated exactly. Old arrangement in one line, new arrangement in one line. Not "expanding the project" but "adding the medical-surgical unit at the second site, twenty-two eligible staff, same instrument, same consent process".
- The reason. Recruitment fell short, the facility reorganised, a question proved ambiguous in practice. Plain reasons read better than elaborate ones.
- The risk assessment. Whether the change adds any burden, exposure or identifiability, and what continues to hold it in check.
- Consent consequences. Whether people already enrolled need to be told, re-consented, or neither, and why. If the consent text changes, both versions belong in the file.
- The document list. Every approved page this replaces, named and versioned, with the new version attached. One current version per document, and the superseded ones withdrawn.
- Anything the change forces elsewhere. A new site means a new authorisation; a new collector means a training record; a new data location means a security plan edit.
That last line is where amendments go wrong most often. A change to an approved project ripples exactly as a revision does, and the discipline is identical to the one described in answering the board's revisions: list every page that asserts the old arrangement, and move all of them together.
Does the capstone side need to know as well?
Usually, yes, and often first. WGU's application asks that the described project align with the proposal approved earlier in the capstone sequence, and a WGU guidebook expects the written chapters to follow that approved proposal. A change substantial enough to need board clearance is normally substantial enough to matter to your capstone instructor, so the honest order is: settle it with the capstone side, amend with the board, then write.
What happens if the change was made first?
It happens, and it is recoverable, but it is not fixed by silence. Data collected outside an approved arrangement sits outside the approval, and no board treats a quiet correction kindly when it surfaces later in a written chapter. Stop the activity that went beyond the approval, report what occurred and when, describe what was collected, and ask the board how it wishes the material handled. Boards hold the authority to suspend or terminate approval of work not being conducted as required, and that authority is exercised far less often than the fear of it suggests — reports made promptly are ordinary business, and reports extracted later are not.
The related duty runs alongside: unanticipated problems involving risk to participants or others are reported rather than absorbed. That standard, and the difference between a problem and an ordinary difficulty, is set out in what happens after the approval letter.
Where does this desk fit?
Amendments are quiet work that goes wrong quietly. We hold the approved file with its dates and versions, draft the amendment when the project moves, rebuild every page the change touches, file it and answer what comes back — the same desk that carried the original submission. This practice is independent of Western Governors University. Design decisions are yours, and clearance is the board's to give. The eight stations set out the engagement; the questions page covers the common ones.
What to do next
Has the project shifted already, or is it about to? Send the approval letter and the change you have in mind. The reading is free and will tell you whether it needs clearance, what the amendment should say, and which approved pages have to be replaced. Request the free application review. If the file has not been submitted yet, the process end to end is the better starting point.
Sources
- WGU policy handbook, Institutional Review Board (IRB) — monitoring of approved work, prompt notice of unanticipated risks, and notice of needed changes to approved plans before implementation: cm.wgu.edu (WGU Knowledge Center, IRB policy)
- 45 CFR 46.108 — prompt reporting of proposed changes, and work continuing under approved terms until a change is reviewed and approved, except to eliminate an apparent immediate hazard: Cornell LII, section 46.108
- 45 CFR 46.110 — expedited handling of minor changes in previously approved work, and the limit that such reviewers may not disapprove: Cornell LII, section 46.110
- 45 CFR 46.113 — authority to suspend or terminate approval, with reasons stated and reported promptly: Cornell LII, section 46.113
- WGU Institutional Review Board, Request for Approval to Conduct Research (published copy of the university's capstone application form) — alignment with the approved proposal and with what participants are told: request_for_approval_to_conduct_research (PDF)
The project moved. Move the permission with it.
Send the approval letter and the change you are considering. The reading is free, and it will say plainly whether the board needs to see this before it happens.
Request the free application review- the change, stated exactly
- what it does to the protections
- every approved page it replaces