LabWrite
is an online resource designed to help students take full advantage of
one of the most important activities for learning in the sciences—writing
good lab reports. Writing good lab reports helps students learn the science
of the lab and improves their ability to think scientifically. As a lab
instructor, however, you have a lot of other things for you to attend
to: preparing your labs, making sure students can use lab instruments,
helping students gather and manage lab data, and maintaining a safe lab
environment. Given all these tasks, it may be difficult to give the necessary
attention to teaching lab reports.
LabWrite provides the teaching
tools you need to help your students benefit from the learning potential
in writing lab reports. And because LabWrite is online, students can use
it when they need it most.
But LabWrite is not just about
writing lab reports. It shapes the entire lab experience as a learning
experience by structuring each lab into the four stages that provide the
foundation for the students’ web site: PreLab,
InLab, PostLab, and
LabCheck.
PreLab
is a set of questions for students to answer before doing each lab. Answering
these questions prepares students to get the most out the lab by guiding
their understanding of the scientific concept they are supposed to be
learning about by doing the lab and by forming the lab as an act of scientific
inquiry based on a hypothesis.
InLab
is a lab notebook that takes students through the process of collecting,
analyzing, and making sense of the data from the lab. Throughout the process,
students are provided resources that help them work effectively with data,
such as using Excel, identifying dependent and independent variables,
making a table for raw data, understanding the kinds of data they have
collected, and creating tables and graphs appropriate to the data.
PostLab
is a step-by-step guide for writing the lab report. It leads students
in using information from their PreLab and InLab responses to write their
reports. Students build reports section by section, starting with the
ones that they already know the most about, first the Methods and then
the Results and working their way to the Abstract and Title. LabWrite’s
“inside-out” approach
provides students a sensible and logical way of writing the lab report.
LabCheck
provides a checklist students can use as a guide for revising their reports
before turning them in. Another feature of LabCheck is an evaluation sheet
that matches the instructor’s grading sheet. When the graded lab
report is returned, students can use the links on their online evaluation
guide to find specific help they can use to improve the next report they
write.
Resources
are a collection of guides tailored to meet students’ specific needs.
For example, if they need help in entering data into an Excel spreadsheet,
creating a graph, making sure they have the right format for citations
and references, or correcting their grammar, they can find the answers
they need in a LabWrite resource. Most of the resources are also integrated
into each LabWrite stage to provide immediate help as students use either
the Self-Guide or Tutor modes. For an overview of all the LabWrite resources,
go to the Resources Homepage, accessible from the LabWrite homepage or
from any subpage in the student's site.
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