Students have to write reports on the experiments they do which include a methods and a evaluation part. This is reasonable, I think.
Some of the assistants and/or lecturers also ask for an huge theory part. They argue that this way students are forced to deal with the theory of the experiment if they have to write an short essay on it.
This results in students just hand-copying textes from scripts, or books, or mates and rephrase them.
So, first, I counter-argue that rephrasing statements which are correct leads to statements which are at best(!) still correct. But most of the time it will lead to statements which just became wrong. So this does not help at all.
To counter that ,actually, they just have to put quotating-marks around an untouched text and make a reference to the source - which would be correct IMHO. Amusingly, this is (often) not allowed, though.
Secondly, I think that the responsibility for briefing yourself with the theory is kind of your own buisness. Of course, this is arguable.
Thirdly, I think hand-copying large textes (and even rephrasing them) is a lower brain function, i.e. that you can do that without dealing with the content of the text. It is just "stupid work".
And that's what my question is about: From my own experience, I can confirm that. But are there any references on this topic or am I the only one who experienced that?
As a commercial head scientist, it is crucial that technical research staff (routine unskilled measurements carried out by unthinking technicians is a different matter) are able to understand the experiments that they are undertaking. This is no longer for academic learning, but for real-life work and I believe that the academic instruction of university undergraduates should adequately prepare students for the real world after university.
This means that they need to be able to demonstrate to me that they can rephrase any background theory while capturing the true meaning - this means rephrasing is an essential skill. It encourages the student to think about what they read and to be able to rephrase it they need to be able to understand the underlying concept thereby forcing it deeper into their brain. It is this ability that allows a research scientist to be better at evaluating the progress of their research. Sure many will start off poor at this skill, but all the more reason for developing it in an academic context.
In this day and age of "cut, copy and paste" I would agree with you that any written requirement which involves stuff that can be retrieved for other sources by electronic means does not add to the development of individual competence in the classroom. However, the foundation of the methid does not stem from present-day techology and its intrinsinc value has not changed with time. That is; if you have to relay something (either orally or, even better, in writing) you have to have learned it quite well.
I therefore urge any teacher to resort to this method but to adapt it to present-day situations. It takes abit more imagination and a bit more work on the part of the teacher, but it's well worth it.
Exactly, Sven; blindly copying else's texts is a dull job! It leads to the fact that "writing lab reports" becomes "copying lab reports". According to me, the only function of the lab report is to show (in a compact form) what the student has actually done in the laboratory...
Unfortunately, I cannot agree with the statements of Mr. Kochmann and Mr. Mechkov for the 'usefulness' of the 'Labs-reports'. Especially, when they contain the theoretical background of the exercises performed. In this respect, a 'Labs-report' do not reflect only 'what a student done' in the laboratory.
Let's do not forgot that the question is for labs exercises performed within the frame of an educational course at given modul/s for achievement of the educational academic degree. Therefore the educational part of the 'Labs-reports' aim to show: 1. The logic-schemes of the performed scientific experiments according the theoretical scientifiic background. 2. And to build the habit for expereimental design and systematization of the experimental data sets, their processing and evaluation.
The writing of the 'Labs-reports' is especially useful, when the students perform an independent research within the frame of their BSc, MSc, and/or PhD thesises (dissertations), when they should design the experiments, and should operate with significantly large experimental data-sets of variety of methods.
The skills for organization, systematization and writing of 'Labs-reports' actually are very useful for the successful graduation within the frame of time-limited BSc, MSc and/or PhD programs. Even, not only for them. It is very important for further scientific career.
Mr. Vourkas, the problem in fact comes, when the compiled content of the lectures and laboratory exercises, including the schedule for their performance within the frame of given educational course (even whole module) are not well organized. In such cases the students cannot follow the logic between the theory-experimental design-exercises. For this reason they often found the writing of 'labs-reports' as a 'time-lost' and/or 'nonsense'.
Thank you for your answers so far. First, I want to emphasize that I am NOT arguing AGAINST lab-reports but against plain, general theory parts in such reports!
Lab-reports are no 'nonsense'. It is reasonable to write down WHAT and HOW you have done something at the lab, how you evaluate it, and if you have understood the experiment and its results.
Maybe I should explain more what I mean with an example: Let us assume an experiment about fluorescence spectroscopy (e.g. determination of quinine in soft drinks). The methods and materials part explains the standardsolutions they made and used and also the extraction of quinine from the soft drink to an organic phase and back to an aqueous phase, later, and so. The evaluation part will cover the plotting of the regression, the recalculation of all dilution steps, and the final result and a litte discussion about the result (does it make sense? is it under/over the limit concentration which is alowed in soft drinks? are there possibly errors/mistakes? ...).
You could also write an huge, abstract theory part on fluorescence (how it occurs, Jablonski diagram, deletion processes, ...). This is actually required in some schools (physical chemistry, analytical chemistry). But why?
Is there really any GOOD reason to write down something which has been discovered before? Which should be clear at this point? Is it good (indirectly) encouraging students to rephrase textes which are correct to textes which MAY be still correct?
The students should have prepared theirselves for the experiment which should have been checked by the supervisor/assistant, who's function is also IMHO to discuss and explain things which might be not clear. Then they do their experiment and then they do their reports. Especially for the evaluation part and the discussion of the results require the application of the theory background to argue. So, at this point the theory should be clear and set, and I can check and see this without any theory part.
If you want to check or point out specific - important - things you can give a list of maybe five questions to the students they have to answer in the evaluation part. In our case it could be something like "Why are we extracting the quinine from the soft drinks and not measuring it directly there?". The reason is obvious if you look at the drinks and know something about spectroscopy:"The drinks are murky solutions which is bad for spectroscopy because... "
There you have it! An answer could be just 2 or 3 sentence but it shows MUCH more about the theoretical background of the author as 10 pages full of abstractness.
On top of that, I personally take the time (20-30 minutes for each group) and discuss the whole report with the students. And there I focus - of course - on WHAT and HOW they have done the experiment and their results, and discuss them. "What would happen if there is another dye in the drink?" "Have you though about doing...?"
Lastly, I want to mention also that you never again write such theoretical parts. You write "Backgrounds" and "Introduction" for papers but they have a whole different style: You put statement by statement together and look for references to support these statements. This is completely different of that what students (should) do (the rephrasing part I mentioned).
Apart from that, IMHO, you always writing reports about what YOU have done and YOUR results using your background to argue and evaluate. I have never written a report with a huge theoretical part about fluorescence to my supervisors in my diploma or PhD thesis: They all knew what fluorescence is, I (should) have known either, so why bother? Focus on process and results!
Again, at the end of my text, I want to emphasize that I am NOT arguing against lab-report itself! Please keep that in mind :)
It is very interesting to see how similar things are in completely different fields of science, technology and life ....
Mr. Kochmann, your further arguments and clarifications as well as example, however arise the following very importan for theforum-discussion questions.
1. In which module are these Labs-exercises?. Are they for BSc or MSc students?
2. Which is the discipline. For example 'chemistry' - only for BSc, 'Food chemistry'-MSc...which one.
3. What is the matter of your course?.
Because of if it is a basicphysical methods involving Fs, than the knowledge on the physical background is obligatory. If however the Labs-exercises are part of specialized cource on the field of 'Analytical chemistry', 'Food chemistry', and related. Than exactly the matrix effects for quantitative determination of dyes in soft drinks should emphasised. If you have structurally-similar dyes than the Fs method generally has limitations towards the selectivity. In this respect the theoretical background of your 'Labs-reports' is defined by the matter of the corresponding course.
On the other site the PhD-thesis construction has completelly different character. In this respect remain the question which kind of 'labs-reports' you visualized? Part of educational cources, part of MSc and/or PhD thesis?!
Furthermore if you visualized reports part of PhD thesis, on the field of analytical chemistry, food chemistry, than generally the Fs is not among the robust method, because of as you mentioned the sample pretreatments increase the systematic errors of the measurements. The metrology is unsatisfied. The method is really cheap, but it is characterized with the high concentration limits of detection, low selectivity, multi-step sample preparation techniques. For analytical chemistry of food generally dominated methods based on the mass spectrometry and its hybrid variants, where prominent metrology is achieved under fast, sample-pretreatment limited steps, ultra high accuracy, low concentration limits of detection, and even direct analysis in complex multicomponent mixture as soft drinks (foods generally). Therefore even you do not need extraction.
Even, if the Labs-exercises incolve chromatography, extraction methods in the analytical chemistry and/or related, than why involved Fs detection!? You may used also MS-method.
As a commercial head scientist, it is crucial that technical research staff (routine unskilled measurements carried out by unthinking technicians is a different matter) are able to understand the experiments that they are undertaking. This is no longer for academic learning, but for real-life work and I believe that the academic instruction of university undergraduates should adequately prepare students for the real world after university.
This means that they need to be able to demonstrate to me that they can rephrase any background theory while capturing the true meaning - this means rephrasing is an essential skill. It encourages the student to think about what they read and to be able to rephrase it they need to be able to understand the underlying concept thereby forcing it deeper into their brain. It is this ability that allows a research scientist to be better at evaluating the progress of their research. Sure many will start off poor at this skill, but all the more reason for developing it in an academic context.
Excellent thoughts... I would add that "rephrasing" is essential for teaching as well...
First of all: Happy New Year to everyone!
I think you have a very good point here, James! I see, why 'rephrasing' is an essential skill to you.
But, do you think a lab-report is the right place for learning this technique? IMHO, a lab-report should focus on the performance, documentation, results, and evaluation of an experiment itself - not on the theory you should already be fully aware of, when you start the experiment.
Would it not be better to have an extra seminar here for '(scientific) writing'? Imagine a seminar for undergraduates from the first to the last term where the undergraduates have to write (short) essays about an assigned topic (maybe also in groups of two or three) to pass. The seminar itself could cover the different styles of writing/rephrasing and referencing/quoting. Furthermore, it could introduce undergraduates to all the scientific tools you can use for that (scifinder, isi web of knowledge, google scholar, diffrent reference managers, ...).
Personally, I would appreciate such a seminar seeing how many graduate students and also graduated staff are not aware of the power of such tools ('You can use scifinder to search for reactions? Wow!' - I think, recently, I saw a topic on this on researchgate).
What do you think? Is there maybe such a seminar at some university?
Cyril mentioned teaching: This is a different story, I think, and we should isolate it a litte bit. For teaching giving (a lot of) presentations would be better (than writing lab-reports). Hence, you do not only want someone to get into a topic to understand it (for oneself) - but later to introduce and teach OTHERS about this topic. And you can judge both areas separately: We all know persons who are really good at their job/research area but lack presentation and teaching skills, don't we?
Hi Sven, I've never had to research teaching methods, but I did appreciate that the a classes in my uni didn't artificially separate the need to understand theory from the carrying out of the experiment. Maybe early on in a degree they may need separate treatment, but by the end of the degree the student should be comfortable integrating all the elements by having done it practically. It is important the students see things coherently. In my experience splitting everything into self-contained modules without ever drawing them together leads to modular thinking which becomes a problem in commercialisation as nothing is actually modular.
Mr. Beattie, very valuable comments. The teaching methods and educational approaches, particualrly for the preparation of the 'Labs-reports' depend really strongly by the educational level, the matter of the cources, academic modules and more.
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