Lab Reports & Writing in Biology: Home

The National Science Education Standards (NSES) and the Biological Science Curriculum Study (BSCS) address the need for teachers to move classrooms toward an inquiry approach to learning. Currently, there is movement toward a new structure for science standards, the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). In this article, I will take the five key ideas from the NSES, the BSCS 5 Es, and the three dimensions of the framework of NGSS and identify similarities. They represent the ideas around which we will be building a practice of inquiry, applied to overall classroom practice. Guidance in the form of reflective questions will be suggested as a way to adapt existing practice. The goal is to create an environment supportive of both the teacher and student inquiry.

The Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) were developed by teachers, scientists, and leaders in science and science education from around the country and are endorsed by the National Science Teachers Association, a partner in the development of the NGSS. The hardest part of incorporating them into your classroom is simply getting started. Making sense of the NGSS can be difficult at first, but with practice and a few pointers, one will find these standards immensely helpful. Here, Veal and Sneed discuss how they modified a lab activity to align with the NGSS.

The writing of lab reports is part and parcel of chemistry in higher institutions around the world,
with almost similar formats and procedures. This paper looks at the practice of writing lab reports
in Chemistry for two cohorts of the pre-university programme, as well as four cohorts of the first
and second years of the Bachelor of Pharmacy programme. The study also compares lab reports
written by students in the respective courses to investigate the skills and knowledge obtained by
students, and the value of assessment marks given on students’ reports. The effectiveness of the lab report in contributing to their knowledge during the final exam is also explored. Initial findings showed that lab reports for undergraduate Pharmacy programme can become redundant with the existence of the lab manual, hence questioning the validity of the assessment marks. All experiments tested theories with generally known results which are explained in textbooks and/ or on the Internet, which disputes the need of a lab report. Additionally, students found questions reflecting higher levels of Bloom’s taxonomy more difficult to handle, with an added challenge to complete the Discussion section of the lab report, despite sufficient discussions and lectures. The study ends with suggestions for alternative methods of writing lab reports – to restructure, revise and improve.

A protocol that emphasizes lab report writing using a piecemeal approach coupled with peer review is described. As the lab course progresses, the focus of the report writing changes sequentially through the abstract and introduction, the discussion, and the procedure. Two styles of lab programs are presented. One style rotates the students through the experiments on a weekly basis, whereas the other style is a lockstep process but modified to divide the class in two. This protocol increases the quality of the writing experience without losing experimental content or increasing the students’ workload.

Incorporating peer-review steps in the laboratory report writing process provides benefits to students, but it also can create additional work for laboratory instructors. The laboratory report writing process described here allows the instructor to grade only one lab report for every two to four students, while giving the students the benefits of peer review and prompt feedback on their laboratory reports. Here we present the application of this process to a sophomore level genetics course and a freshman level cellular biology course, including information regarding class time spent on student preparation activities, instructor preparation, prerequisite student knowledge, suggested learning outcomes, procedure, materials, student instructions, faculty instructions, assessment tools, and sample data. T-tests comparing individual and group grading of the introductory cell biology lab reports yielded average scores that were not significantly different from each other (p = 0.13, n = 23 for individual grading, n = 6 for group grading). T-tests also demonstrated that average laboratory report grades of students using the peer-review process were not significantly different from those of students working alone (p = 0.98, n = 9 for individual grading, n = 6 for pair grading). While the grading process described here does not lead to statistically significant gains (or reductions) in student learning, it allows student learning to be maintained while decreasing instructor workload. This reduction in workload could allow the instructor time to pursue other high-impact practices that have been shown to increase student learning. Finally, we suggest possible modifications to the procedure for application in a variety of settings.

A scaffold was created for the explicit instruction of laboratory report writing. The scaffold breaks the laboratory report into sections and teaches students to ask and answer questions in order to generate section-appropriate content and language. Implementation of the scaffold is done through a series of section-specific worksheets that are introduced during the semester. Implementation is supported by one-on-one feedback on all student writing. The integration of scaffolding and personal feedback has led to improved student writing.

The written lab report--a concise and accurate accounting of an experiment, including a summary of the procedure, presentation of the results, reasoned analysis, and thoughtful explanation--is essential to the scientific endeavor and a key expression and product of inquiry. Generally, however, students and teachers dislike these reports, the former for needing to write them and the latter for needing to read them. Here, Hazzard discusses how screencasts are a valuable tool for motivation, collaboration, expression and authentic assessment.

Understanding the scientific reasoning behind a laboratory procedure is critical to the student's understanding of the scientific process and has become increasingly important. in the introductory project-based laboratory curriculum at Brandeis University, we ask our students to write true scientific purposes for each laboratory in place of learning objectives. With discussion, feedback, and practice, we find that this simple exercise increases our students' understanding of the material and their ability to write abstracts and solidifies the underlying connections between multiweek procedures.

The laboratory provides an opportunity for students to achieve many learning outcomes including to critically evaluate information, interpret and draw conclusions from scientific data, and communicate scientific results, information, or arguments. This paper describes a laboratory-writing task that involves self and peer evaluation. After discussion of the expectations of laboratory report writing during class, students self and peer evaluate reports. In a process similar to double-blind journal refereeing, students practise critically evaluating the quality of academic writing using a rubric. The summative assessment is based on how consistent their evaluations are with the evaluations of the same reports performed by their peers. The formative assessment is that students receive peer evaluations and feedback via a rubric on reports that they have written. The skill of critically evaluating their own reports is used to improve the laboratory reports in subsequent assessment tasks.

The ability of science undergraduate students to capably communicate course content and their understanding of scientific phenomena through writing has long been considered a problem. Effective methods for improving student writing skills are often fragmented and undertaken on a course-by-course basis rather than as a coordinated approach. This paper describes the implementation of a departmental effort to enhance and evaluate chemistry student writing in several upper-year laboratory courses. The program involves introducing extensive writing focused aspects to course assignments and reports and has impacted over 600 students during a six-year period. Student feedback has been exceptionally positive from undergraduates as well as graduate students who previously participated in the initiative.

Writing-to-learn (WTL) is an effective instructional and learning strategy that centers on the process of organizing and articulating ideas, as opposed to writingto-communicate, which centers on the finished written product. We describe a WTL model that we have developed and tested with various student groups over several years. With effective instructor guidance (through prompts and in-class discussion), students demonstrated greater scientific literacy after participating in writing activities about engaging socio-scientific issues. We believe that WTL activities are underused in secondary and post-secondary biology courses.

Writing-to-learn (WTL) is an effective instructional and learning strategy that centers on the process of organizing and articulating ideas, as opposed to writingto-communicate, which centers on the finished written product. We describe a WTL model that we have developed and tested with various student groups over several years. With effective instructor guidance (through prompts and in-class discussion), students demonstrated greater scientific literacy after participating in writing activities about engaging socio-scientific issues. We believe that WTL activities are underused in secondary and post-secondary biology courses.

Our objective was to investigate the impact of the Science Writing Heuristic (SWH) on undergraduates’ ability to express logical conclusions and include appropriate evidence in formal writing assignments. Students in three laboratory sections were randomly allocated to the SWH treatment (n = 51 students) with another three sections serving as a control (n = 47 students). All sections received an identical formal writing assignment to report results of laboratory activities. Four blinded raters used a 6-point rating scheme to evaluate the quality of students’ writing performance. Raters’ independent scoring agreement was evaluated using Cronbach's α. Paper scores were compared using a t-test, then papers were combined into low-scoring (3.5 of 6 points) or high-scoring (>3.5 of 6 points) sets and SWH and control cohorts were compared using Pearson's chi-square test. Papers from the SWH cohort were significantly (P = 0.02) more likely to receive a high score than those from the control cohort. Overall scores of SWH cohort papers tended to be higher (P = 0.07) than those from the control cohort. Gains in student conceptual understanding elicited by the SWH approach improved student ability to express logical conclusions about their data and include appropriate evidence to support those conclusions in formal research reports. Extending the writing tasks of the SWH to formal writing assignments can improve the ability of undergraduates to argue effectively for their research findings.

Teaching scientific writing in biology classes is challenging for both students and instructors. This article offers and reviews several useful ‘toolkit’ items that improve student writing. These include sentence and paper-length templates, funneling and compartmentalization, and preparing compendiums of corrections. In addition, students benefit from reviewing scientific figures and learning about the verbs used in scientific papers. The approaches and exercises presented in this paper empower students in their development of a personal writing style. Often, however, the best tools are those that students develop with each other, a method of tool building addressed in this article.

We discuss a pedagogical strategy to improve the writing of laboratory reports. Our multipronged approach gauges students' comprehension beforehand, rewards early success, and focuses feedback on the most serious writing issues. In preliminary studies, more students were able to achieve our threshold for success in our introductory courses, and students reported being more motivated to write well.

Most teachers agree that writing is an important skill for students to master, yet not all teachers incorporate writing assignments in their courses. Employers agree that written communication is important for college graduates, yet in a survey, less than 10% of employers thought that colleges did a good job preparing students for work. Writing an animal species account for Animal Diversity Web (http://animaldiversity.org) provides students with a real-world example of writing skills and provides resources to instructors who want to incorporate writing in their classes.