Academic Poll: How Much Should Students Write?

Would your answer be different for the introductory majors course than for the alegbra-based "pre-med" course?

Hell no. Doctors have to learn to write, too.

Why aren't lab reports web forms at this date in time? Or some application where you are prompted for all the various things needed like objective list, list of equipment used, places for digital pictures of setup, and so on. If you have it then that is what should be used to generate a nice database of lab results. Otherwise it is pointless.

Either the people should be getting it in their major, or they aren't going to be getting much use out of the formality. Well, Eexcept in the general sense that people will be telling them to do pointless stuff for much of their working lives so they might as well get used to it right away.

It's not clear to me what level of "lab report" you are talking about. I voted "7" with a pretty low-level lab report format in mind. I don't think intro-level students should be writing big multi-page proto-research-scientist type reports, but they should be expected to be able to describe their experiment and their observed results.

And I cannot think of any reason why this should not apply to pre-med types; doctors need to be introduced to the idea of writing down their hypotheses, observations, and conclusions as much as anybody, maybe even more.

I think we did three or four formal write-ups in 17H and 18H and I remember they were tough. I didn't think they were particularly useful in helping me learn the material, though. I learned how to do uncertainties in the first year, but didn't really learn how to write a good lab report until later. I always argue that the major improvements in my writing came from Physics lab reports (concise, accurate, and often Physics professors were just as tough or tougher on my grammar than in my Intro English courses), but this improvement definitely was not from first year labs. I sort of remember "full write ups" meaning that I had a weekend time committment similar to a Monday morning exam...no reason to kill students over it. Especially the pre-meds. Especially with god forsaken V Python in non-honors intro courses.

I do 2. It takes a few weeks to get them to the point where they're even doing the lab the way I expect, so until then it's pointless to work on how they describe it when they don't yet have something to write about. In experiment 4 (of 8) they write a report. I get it a week later, they get it back a week after that, we discuss it, then we do 1 more report. I'd rather have them wait on the next report until they've gotten feedback on the first report.

When it all comes down to it, students should do as many formal lab reports as allowed by the TA-hours the university gives you to get the grading done. Practicality sometimes means you can't give as many as you would like - it is very time-consuming to grade them correctly. But the more the students have to write, the better off they are.

If you're the teacher, then yeah, 7 labs. Otherwise, zero. Scientists who can write are a rare breed. Which means the general problem is that these labs will be graded, in most cases, by people who also can't write and won't have much constructive feedback. Instead make writing a required course for everyone, and leave the crit to the writing instructors.

At my university we make them do a full 12 reports with about half being formal (nearly 1 per week on a 15 week semester). The experiments cover a rather broad range but don't really go that much in depth.

I went with four, with the caveat that you should grade them very critically (if it's easy grading, go for all 7). To save your sanity a little (or that of the grader), I'd suggest leaving it open to each individual student which labs they choose to do the full reports for, with the requirement that they get at least 2 done before midterm. Then you don't have to grade them all at once, and it gives the students some flexibility in scheduling when they write them.

I had an intro history course that took this approach with papers, and I was very grateful for it. Reports every single week on intro-level labs just gets repetitive, and encourage students and graders to do a sloppy job of it.

I think the correct answer is not only, "As many as possible," but also, "And they should all read a substantial portion of each others' work after the fact."

The absolute best academic experience I had in terms of writing was in a two semester sequence for honors student freshmen, in college. It was a combined history and lit course (hence the two semesters) and had us all writing something like a paper (maybe slightly more) every week. So, all told, something like 35 papers.

The kicker was that every assignment featured a few students whose papers would get passed around to all other students, and discussed in that week's "discussion session." Happened to every student at least twice (i.e., at least once a semester) and I think it might have been more often than that.

Having your peers bitch about your own personal writing-- to your face-- is a revelatory experience. So is reading your peers' writing. It just means more having your peer tell you that you can't write, than some remote asshole grad student or professor with too much time on their hands, anyway.

Having graded enough lab reports in grad school, I wish I'd thought to suggest a similar model to the professors at the time, because oh my God! I remember wading through a lot of illiterate bullshit in my time.

I'm not the person to comment here, really, having written none, read few, and taught none of this form. Certainly MIT in its Writing Across the Curriculum requirement specifies that students in science and engineering majors must produce a significant body of technical writing in at least two classes within their major, and the folks who run that requirement see real improvement across the demand for lots of writing.

But from where I sit, now teaching an upper level undergraduate course on popular science writing, it seems to me that it would be a damn good idea to ask students in lab courses to write at least one piece -- maybe even in the form of a research-driven blog post ala Dave Munger's project -- that seeks to explain a principle in one of the lab assignments to an audience beyond the class walls. Blog posts of this type are the easiest of the forms I assign -- and they still present very useful and quite stringent challenges to some of the brightest young folks I ever expect to meet.

(It's worth noting that the grad students who take this course, and I've had some each of the two times I've taught it so far, tend to have more trouble writing out of their professional voices than the undergraduates, which is no surprise. But it lends force to the comment above who suggests that grad TAs might have trouble grading undergraduate writing to a useful end for the student-writer.

Well, my point wasn't that the grad students weren't able to grade the papers well, my point was that undergrads tend to rationalize comments about their writing from grad students and professors as being picky, petty, and unrelated to comments that "real readers" would make.

I was certainly no different when I was an undergrad.

Human beings, as a general rule, are very good at rationalizing criticisms away. Forcing students to see a lot of criticism, from a lot of sources, many of whom are peers, makes that rationalization much more difficult. Well, a little more difficult, anyway.

I voted other, because I think the answer is either 0 or 7 depending on your definition of "formal".

Every lab should have a report that details the experamental setup, data, data analysis and conclusions. Formal to me means that you are probably adding an abstract, an introduction, a discussion of the relavent theory, etc.

So the question is is the purpose of the lab to a) teach the science (and perhapse some scientific method) b) teach how to use the lab equipment, or c) teach formal report writing.

Fundamentally, if I'm grading a report I want to know two things. 1) did the student follow the instructions. 2) Does the data support the analysis. If the students measures the Plank's Constant and is off by a factor of 1000 there should be some discussion of why. (I care more that the data supports the conclusion than whether they get the expected answer)

I certainly think it's unfair of the student to have different levels of requirements for each lab. (3 formal reports and 4 informal) though I could certainly support a requirement that the student needs to turn in one full blown formal report as an end of the quarter requirement. I'd require the students to turn in an informal report for each lab (experament discription, data, analysis, conclusion) and then let the student pick one of the labs to write up a formal report. For a semester system I might ask for 2 formal reports if I think the formal writing is important. (I realy prefer 3 quarters to 2 semesters, it's more work but the students learn a lot more)

Something to keep in mind is that undergrads HATE labs. They have a 3 hour lab, have to spend several hours writing up a report every week, and they only get one quarter (or semester) hour of credit for the trouble.

For Grad students I wouldn't require a report at all. The labs are essentially for teaching the student how to use the equipment (e.g. electron microscope) so the experement is completely subsidiary to the task.

How to make physics ideas clear . . .
. . . . . . ??? . . .
After reading some scientific ideas:

The more I study the more I know
The more I know the more ideas I have
The more ideas I have the more they abstract
The more they abstract the less I know the truth

And therefore conclusion from some article

" One of the best kept secrets of science is
that physicists have lost their grip on reality "

Israel Sadovnik. Socratus
http://www.worldnpa.org/php2/index.php?tab0=Scientists&tab1=Display&id=…
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