Lab Notebooks and Formal Lab Reports Revisited

Ruthanne B. Pitkin, Ph.D.
Shippensburg University
Shippensburg, PA
rbpitk@ship.edu

What are the pedagogical and practical purposes of student lab notebooks for today’s students? Do assigning and grading formal lab reports help students? Do students think that lab notebooks and lab reports are just “busy work”? These are some of the questions that I have been struggling with for the past couple of years.

My first concern was that the students did not take the lab notebooks seriously in either my introductory biology or upper level animal physiology classes. In the past I did not give a specific grade for lab notebooks, and the notebooks were incomplete, disorganized, and of little use to the students. At the same time, I noticed that the three to four formal lab reports per student per semester in both courses were becoming a real trial for both the students and instructor. The students did not know how to use the IMRAD (intro, methods, results and discussion) style, and even after a great deal of corrections and opportunities to rewrite, the grades were very low (typical average 13 out of 20 points). We ask the students to buy Successful Lab Reports by Lobban and Schefter, but I do not think that many students really read this inexpensive "how to“ book. We did the termite lab or other labs to introduce them to the scientific method to help the students to understand the scientific process and that communicating their findings was important, but they did not demonstrate understanding of science and scientific writing in their subsequent reports. My colleagues were reporting the same problems.

When the frustration level got pretty high, I decreased the number of formal lab reports to two per student per semester and used mini-reports (no method or references cited sections) that were submitted as group reports. These were only worth 10 points. The disadvantages with the mini-reports are all the problems that come with group reports, but I keep emphasizing that employers want workers who can work cooperatively. The advantages were fewer pages to read, resulting in faster turnaround time and less impact on total course grade.

When I finally defined my goals for the entire lab experience, I determined that I wanted students to think and act like scientists, including keeping a more professional notebook and writing in a format used by biologists. These ideas were pretty obvious since I had already incorporated many ABLE type investigative labs for both courses. What I needed to figure out was how to get the students to use these labs to act like scientists instead of “hands-on” but not “minds on”. The students were instructed to buy a cheap bound lab notebook and save the first two pages for a table of contents. I changed the wording in the lab manuals and talked about “investigations," not “exercises”. Next I added a section on Basic Experimental Design before each set of procedure to help students understand what they were going to do. I added an appendix on Lab Plans and Lab Notebooks that explained how to write out a simple plan before coming to lab. This lab plan should include the objectives, hypotheses, overview of methods, data tables, and some idea of statistical tests if appropriate. During lab, the students should write down any changes in procedures and introductory comments from their instructors. They should be recording data in properly titled tables during lab. They should also try to answer questions raised in the lab manual and discuss them with their peers and instructor. After lab, each student should finish any calculations, analyze the data, and make a figure if appropriate. The students are then directed to write a short discussion that revisits the hypothesis, using their data to support or reject the null hypothesis; they could also write a summary if a hypothesis was not appropriate for the lab. If they write a mini-report or formal report on a particular lab, they should paste these reports into their lab notebook so that all materials for a given investigation are together. I now collect the lab books, and a student can earn 10 points for each lab that correctly follows the guidelines.

So did these changes make a difference? Yes. I am rewarding students who demonstrate good organizational and record-keeping skills. Each chapter in the lab notebook is also a scaled-down version of the scientific method and scientific writing. The students are forced to think about what their data mean. Practically, it is easier to correct lab notebooks than formal lab reports and the grades are better. The students feel that they are rewarded for their work and they have a notebook with a complete accumulation of their lab work.

References:

In the 2003 Tested Studies for Laboratory Teaching (vol 25), the following articles talk about lab notebooks and scientific writing.

• Bohrer, K. E. Scientific Journal Writing for Dummies: An Approach to Teaching Scientific Writing to First-Year Biology Majors in an Introductory Lab. (pages 302-305).
• Nickle, T. Assessing Complex Behaviors: Improving Student Writing Skills Using “A Short Guide to Writing about Biology”. (pages 306-311).