Writing Lab Reports Research Articles

Social and Emotional Learning as Experienced by Students in Undergraduate General Chemistry Labs

Students can meticulously perform laboratory techniques and be proficient in writing lab reports yet report negative affective experiences within the chemistry teaching labs. This study addresses this contradiction by studying students’ experiences using a Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) framework to qualitatively and deductively analyze semi-structured student interviews (N=15). The interviews followed the students’ completion of introductory chemistry and focused on their experiences with the laboratories. What emerged from this analysis were the SEL competencies intertwining with all aspects of the teaching labs as students worked with their lab partners, peers, and teaching assistants. The labs provide a unique environment for students to apply their SEL skills, including effective relationship and self-management skills. Despite students using and relying on their SEL skills, they are not always supported in lab design, and this presents a barrier to student success and a positive learning experience associated with the teaching labs. Given this, there is a need to change chemistry laboratory teaching practices and curricula to emphasize support and learning outcomes related to SEL. These findings were used to implement changes to the first-year labs to support SEL competencies, such as designing and implementing a TA manual, providing students with tips for dividing lab procedures, and offering more resources including rubrics.

Gender, Equity, and Science Writing: Examining Differences in Undergraduate Life Science Majors’ Attitudes toward Writing Lab Reports

It is often causally generalized that females naturally excel more at writing than males. Contrastingly, modern conventional wisdom similarly purports that males often innately excel more at science. True or not, both generalizations overlook important gender differences at the intersection of writing in science. This quantitative study investigates undergraduate life science majors’ attitudes to and perceptions of writing lab reports for 294 students who self-identify as either female or male. We used exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses to develop a three-factor scale and provide reliability and validity on several related constructs: confidence, sense of belonging, and persistence as a life science major. Our results indicate males self-report as being significantly more confident at writing lab reports (F (1, 292) = 186.08, p < 0.05) than females. With regard to writing lab reports, no significant differences were found between genders in the constructs of belongingness (F (1, 292) = 1.64, p = 0.20) and persistence as a life science major (F (1, 292) = 0.66, p = 0.42). Understanding attitudes and perceptions toward writing lab reports through an equity lens provides information to help science majors be successful. Our findings add to the literature on gender, equity, and science writing, motivating further exploration into underlying malleable cognitive mechanisms.

Potential ChatGPT Use in Undergraduate Chemistry Laboratories

ChatGPT is a brand new, free AI chatbot that has the potential to produce a seismic shift in chemistry education, especially in written lab reports. An example is explored in which ChatGPT is used to write the discussion portion of a lab report. Ways to detect the use of ChatGPT are also discussed.

A Scaffolded Approach to Laboratory Report Writing for Non-Major and Introductory Physics Classes

Laboratory report assignments for non-major and introductory classes can be challenging because the students are unfamiliar with the type of technical writing required and the subject matter. These issues for the student make the grading for the instructor difficult and time consuming. Determining the level of detail to require, the format, and how to distribute the grading between good writing and physics knowledge is a difficult balancing act. Many courses use laboratory reports to assess if a student can communicate scientific concepts effectively so ignoring the writing issues is not an option, but many students have no experience reading technical documents, let alone writing them. Furthermore, the students need to understand the scientific concepts to effectively communicate them. In this article, a method for providing a scaffolded approach to lab reports is given. This approach aims to provide the student with some much needed examples of technical writing while they are new to the laboratory environment and the course material. A sample lab report template was provided with key information and conclusions removed. As the course continued, the students were required to do an increasing amount of independent writing while the provided content was slowly decreased. By the end of the course the students submitted full independently written lab reports.

Case study analysis of reflective essays by chemistry post-secondary students within a lab-based community service learning water project

Intentional reflection is a key component of Community Service Learning (CSL) as it guides students to integrate knowledge of theory with experience in practice. A semester-long chemistry curriculum with an integrated CSL intervention was implemented in a Canadian university to investigate how reflection in the laboratory setting enhances post-secondary students’ (n = 14) conscious awareness of their learning and their attitudes toward having reflection as part of a course. In typical chemistry laboratories, students follow cookbook recipes from the lab manual and are assessed through written lab reports. These lab reports are similar to a technical report with scientific writing where the design aims to communicate scientific information to other scientists. A case study was conducted with reflective essays, focus group interviews, and student observation to analyze qualitatively how students' attitudes changed in their learning over the course of the CSL activity and how they engaged in this type of reflection. The expected audience that may be interested in this study are those involved in teaching chemistry in higher education and those that are interested in Community Service Learning and experiential learning. The results demonstrate that science students are able to articulate their academic growth, civic engagement, and personal growth through reflective pieces. Furthermore, the reflective pieces support self-regulated learning with a positive engagement and attitude over time. The results support the integration of reflective pieces in laboratory settings.

A course-based undergraduate research experience examining neurodegeneration in Drosophila melanogaster teaches students to think, communicate, and perform like scientists.

As educators strive to incorporate more active learning and inquiry-driven exercises into STEM curricula, Course-based Undergraduate Research Experiences (CUREs) are becoming more common in undergraduate laboratory courses. Here we detail a CURE developed in an upper-level undergraduate genetics course at Yeshiva University, centered on the Drosophila melanogaster ortholog of the human neurodegeneration locus PLA2G6/PARK14. Drosophila PLA2G6 mutants exhibit symptoms of neurodegeneration, such as attenuated lifespan and decreased climbing ability with age, which can be replicated by neuron-specific knockdown of PLA2G6. To ask whether the neurodegeneration phenotype could be caused by loss of PLA2G6 in specific neuronal subtypes, students used GAL4-UAS to perform RNAi knockdown of PLA2G6 in subsets of neurons in the Drosophila central nervous system and measured age-dependent climbing ability. We organized our learning objectives for the CURE into three broad goals of having students think, communicate, and perform like scientists. To assess how well students achieved these goals, we developed a detailed rubric to analyze written lab reports, administered pre- and post-course surveys, and solicited written feedback. We observed striking gains related to all three learning goals, and students reported a high degree of satisfaction. We also observed significantly improved understanding of the scientific method by students in the CURE as compared to the prior year's non-CURE genetics lab students. Thus, this CURE can serve as a template to successfully engage students in novel research, improve understanding of the scientific process, and expose students to the use of Drosophila as a model for human neurodegenerative disease.

Error Analysis of Passive Voice Employed by University Students’ in Writing Lab Reports: A Case Study of Sudan University of Science and Technology (SUST) Students’ at Faculty of Sciences, Chemistry Department

The study aims at analyzing errors made by Sudan University of Science and Technology students’ at faculty of Sciences-Chemistry Department in employing passive voice in writing lab reports. The study focuses precisely on identifying the types of errors occurred in using passive voice and the reasons behind these errors. Descriptive qualitative method is adopted and applied to obtain and process the gathered data. To run this study and to collect reliable data, thirty chemical students are chosen randomly as the subject of the study. Samples of the students’ lab reports are collected and analyzed. The collected data is analyzed according to the Dulay et al. (1982) Surface Strategy Taxonomy model. Teachers’ questionnaire is also used to find out the sources of the students’ errors from the teachers’ point of view. The findings of the study reveals that the majority of the students’ errors are categorized as omission and misinformation whereas additions and misordering errors are fewer and unconsidered. According to the teachers, these errors are attributed to the interference of the mother tongue, lack of knowledge and carelessness of the students.

Using Small Scale Techniques to Assess Laboratory Learning

<span>The laboratory part of a chemistry courses is considered essential by most chemistry instructors, yet few instructors attempt to assess the laboratory learning with anything other than written lab reports. At best lab reports may only provide feedback on students observational skills, communication skills, and their ability to follow directions, skills that students should have, but are hardly the essence of laboratory training. Those instructors that do attempt to assess students laboratory skills often do so with paper and pencil exams.</span>

Little intervention, big results: intentional integration of information literacy into an introductory-level biology lab course

Information literacy refers to a set of skills that allow its user to find appropriate resources and use them to develop, define and defend arguments. In many undergraduate programms, including biology and STEM related fields, students are expected to utilise these skills in writing lab reports, paper analyses, and in developing testable hypotheses. Here, we describe the development of a formalised information literacy module for an introductory biology laboratory course and a rubric to measure the effectiveness of this module, including suggestions for implementation. Our data show that while short-term gains were not made using previously published IL tests, application of a tailored rubric to writing assignments did show significant improvement in the students’ ability to find relevant sources, define the purpose of their work and explore that focus. The results of our evaluation demonstrate that even modest additions of formal instruction in information literacy to a course can significantly improve student gains in this area.

Teaching Assistant Attention and Responsiveness to Student Reasoning in Written Work.

Instructors communicate what they value about students’ written work through their comments and feedback, and this feedback has the potential to direct how students approach writing assignments. In this study, we examined how graduate student teaching assistants (TAs) attended and responded to students’ written lab reports in an introductory biology course. We collected and analyzed marked lab reports from five TAs and interviewed them about their marking decisions. The results show that TAs attended mainly to writing style and form in their markings and comments on lab reports. However, there were occasions when they attended to students’ scientific reasoning in their markings and during interviews. We provide evidence that TAs’ understanding of the purpose of the laboratory course and assessment structure influenced their attention. We also provide evidence that TAs could shift their attention from style and form to reasoning in response to moment-to-moment contextual cues. Building on these results, we discuss course design and professional development that reframes labs and reports to focus on students’ biological reasoning.

LANGUAGE AS AN ENGINEERING LEARNING TOOL: INTEGRATION OF LANGUAGE AND ENGINEERING EDUCATION FOR FIRST-YEAR STUDENTS TO IMPROVE BOTH TECHNICAL LEARNING OUTCOMES AND COMMUNICATION SKILLS

Vantage College (VC) at UBC offers innovative specialized first-year programs for international students that integrate core content courses with complementary language education to allow participants to hone their communication skills while meeting their regular academic requirements. In the Applied Science stream of VC, each engineering course is linked to a complementary language course and the instructors collaborate closely. In this paper, three examples of writing tasks are presented that deal with the intersection of language training and technical engineering content, all in the context of writing lab reports for two engineering chemistry courses. A description of each task is provided, and the benefits to students both in terms of improved communication skills and enhanced understanding of technical content is provided from the perspective of language and engineering instructors, as well as from students based on feedback on each activity collected through surveys. The integrated approach was found to be quite effective in improving learning outcomes.

Commentary: How to teach me physics: Tradition is not always a virtue

Commentary: How to teach me physics: Tradition is not always a virtue

Making Your Genbank Entry Count

Making Your Genbank Entry Count

Inquiry-Based Writing in the Laboratory Course

Writing lab reports in science classes can be more productive and engaging if the experience is structured well.

Abstract B29: Training cancer researchers that are community advocates

Abstract Introduction: Eleven years ago, Moffitt Cancer Center developed Project LINK (Leaders In New Knowledge), a program that created mentoring relationships between established researchers and high school and college level students. The success of this program in aiding underrepresented minorities through the pipeline to careers in cancer research has lead to the establishment of LINK-ET (Emerging Technologies), an undergraduate training program in clinical proteomics that also exposes the students in health-related community education and outreach projects. Methods: The foundations of LINK-ET are mentorship, teamwork, and collaboration. The students received 4 months of intensive training with lectures and laboratory assignments in proteomics, an emerging technology that combines protein separations, mass spectrometry, and bioinformatics for protein characterization. Each student then transitioned into different labs to learn cancer biology for continuing implementation of proteomics addressing biological and clinical research questions. This provides a supportive and collaborative environment whereby the students receive mentoring by expert scientists. Students also attend research group meetings, Proteomics Journal Club, special lectures, and monthly Project LINK meetings. This gives them an opportunity to participate in professional and scientific career development with guest speakers and career counselors. In addition, the four LINK-ET participants (2 juniors and 2 seniors) also volunteer with community events and other educational activities organized by the Tampa Bay Community Cancer Network, a community based participatory project that establishes partnerships between MCC researchers and local organizations that share a common goal of impacting health disparities. Results: The students constantly express how Project LINK-ET has provided them with intensive hands-on research activities and strengthened their basic science skills. During the training they provided written lab reports detailing their understanding of sample preparation, instrumentation, and data analysis in proteomics. Each student will present research at a national conference and co-author educational articles describing the training activities as well as manuscripts that will be submitted to peer reviewed journals. The impact of the community education and outreach has strengthened their commitment to cancer research. Conclusions: This training program, LINK-ET, has combined elements of undergraduate training in science using classroom techniques and lab partnering. Also, the combination with education in health disparities and involvement with community outreach is inspiring the students to be more involved and keeps them attuned to the specific needs of different communities. This integrative program has strengths that motivate the students to continue their development in cancer research related careers. ∗This presenting postdoctoral fellow is supported by an ARRA supplement to the NCI Cancer Center Support Grant awarded to Moffitt (3P30 CA076292-11S6 PI WS Dalton) to create a training program for underrepresented undergraduate students in clinical proteomics Project LINK (Leaders In New Knowledge -Emerging Technologies) that also emphasizes education in health disparities and community outreach. Citation Information: Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev 2010;19(10 Suppl):B29.

The Effect of Peer Review Activities on Qualitative Changes in Lab Reports

The purpose of this research was to investigate how the peer review activity of lab report in the problem-solving experiment effected on the description ability and the quality improvement. The students who were taking the general chemistry experiment course were the subjects for this study. They finished lab reports and received peer review from their peers more than two times. The students who got feedback answered on peer review, revised their reports, and subsequently, completed final reports. The result showed that peer review affected the qualitative improvement of the lab report, specially in the process of 'designing experiment' and 'drawing conclusion and evaluation'. Students could organize their thoughts through writing lab reports. During this process, peer review activities provided the opportunity of self-examination and the way for viewing as objective standpoint. Moreover, the activities established communication fields for exchanging mutual opinions and learning.

Classroom Media Reviews

Introductory Biology. Version 3, Kit 1108. Developed by eScience Labs, Inc. http://www.esciencelabs.com/. Online content system requirement: Java Version 5 or higher in order to run these programs. E-mail: info@esciencelabs.com. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] As an educator, my goal is to make available effective learning experiences to all students. Since I teach some of my classes online, I face the challenge that, unlike students in my traditional laboratory settings, these students are distance learners and must carry out their experiments in their kitchens, their bedrooms, or possibly their living rooms. It's a challenge to provide online students the same experiments they would find in a traditional face-to-face academic setting. Fortunately, a number of companies have developed prepackaged labs students can perform at home. This review looks at some of the biology kits available from EScience Labs, Inc., a Colorado-based company that also provides kits for a variety of grade levels and subject levels such as physics, biology, environmental science, anatomy and physiology. I tried out an eScience custom kit that was developed for an introductory biology course and found it to be a good supplement for an online non-majors course. The lab manual included 15 academically sound and thought-provoking experiments on topics such as: the scientific method, writing lab reports, introduction to the microscope, diffusion, osmosis, respiration, photosynthesis, enzyme activity, cell structure and function, cell division, Mendelian and population genetics, taxonomy, and ecology. I was free to choose either to have students carry out all experiments in the package or to custom fit according to my needs and style. Each kit that students purchase includes access to online content which is designed to supplement the hands-on experiments, provide pre-lab exercises, and reinforce important concepts to support the activities. Registered users also have access to a monitored blog where they can compare results, pool data, and communicate with other students-I like that this encourages collaboration among students who might not otherwise interact. One concern I have with students performing experiments at home is safety. To ensure proper handling of chemicals supplied in their kits, eScience has reduced the use of such chemicals and-if used at all-the volumes are very low. Since some of the experiments involve chemicals, eScience provides online video demonstrations to help convey precautionary steps for safe handling. I appreciate that eScience is available for students via e-marl and telephone in case they have safety questions or need other support while they carry out their experiments. One interesting experiment covers the concept of osmosis. In this kit, students examine the effect of solute concentration on osmosis. …

How do inquiry‐ based physiology laboratories improve learning in majors versus non‐majors courses?

We have incorporated inquiry‐based physiology labs in upper level majors and lower level non‐majors courses. Assessment consisted of oral presentations of experiments designed by students and pre‐ and post‐course surveys for both majors and non‐majors. Differences in assessment included inquiry‐based questions on written exams for non‐majors while majors had written lab reports, lab notebooks, and final projects. Assessment results of our pre/post surveys indicated that the change in overall confidence scores from pre‐ to post‐test were statistically significant each semester (p < .001 for 200 non‐ major students and 44 majors). The greatest increase in confidence ratings occurred for those items that were specifically targeted by our curriculum modifications. One important assessment difference between the majors versus non‐majors courses was in student's perceptions of the types of labs that assisted their understanding of physiological content. Majors identified the presentation labs while non‐majors preferred the non‐presentation labs for learning course material. We are currently investigating the use of alternate curricular strategies and assessment tools to effectively incorporate physiology content and inquiry process skills in both majors and non‐majors labs. NSF CCLI 0509161.

Comments on Lab Reports by Mechanical Engineering Teaching Assistants

Many engineering undergraduates receive their first and perhaps most intensive exposure to engineering communication through writing lab reports in lab courses taught by graduate teaching assistants (TAs). Most of the TAs' teaching of writing happens through their comments on students' lab reports. Technical writing faculty need to be aware of TAs' response practices so they can build on or counteract that instruction as needed. This study examines the response practices of two TAs and the ways the practices shifted after the TAs began using a grading rubric. The analysis reveals distinct patterns in focus and mode, some reflecting best practices and some not. It also indicates encouraging changes after the TAs started using the grading rubric. The TAs' marginalia became more content focused and specific and, perhaps most important, less authoritative and more likely to reflect a coaching mode. The article concludes with implications for technical writing courses.

Teaching Genre to English First-Language Adults: A Study of the Laboratory Report

The question of whether written genres can be learned through explicit teaching or can only be acquired implicitly through writing in authentic contexts remains unanswered. The question is complicated by the different parameters associated with teaching genre to first- or second-language learners, to children or adults, in settings in which the genre is authentically used or in settings (such as writing classes) in which genre learning is decontextualized. Quantitative studies of teaching genre offer mixed results, but in particular, there are no control-group studies of first-language adults. In this paper, we report research on teaching the genre of the laboratory report to first-language university students in biology labs. In this posttest-only control-group study, the treatment was the use of LabWrite, online instructional materials for teaching the lab report. We hypothesized that the treatment group would be more effective in: (1) learning the scientific concept of the lab, and (2) learning to apply scientific reasoning. Results of holistic scoring of lab reports for hypothesis 1 and primary-trait scoring for hypothesis 2 showed that the lab reports of the LabWrite students were rated as significantly higher than those of the control group. A third hypothesis, that students using LabWrite would develop a significantly more positive attitude toward writing lab reports, was also supported. These findings suggest that first-language adults can learn genre through explicit teaching in a context of authentic use of the genre.