Advice on teaching (and grading) lab report writing

I am currently in the trenches grading many general chemistry and inorganic lab reports.  I wonder what strategies you use to teach and grade reports.  I provide students with detailed guidelines and a grading rubric.  They seem to have no problem following the format but they still struggle with presenting a logical analysis of their results that lead them to a viable conclusion.

Dr. J. Metzker / Georgia College Tue, 11/25/2008 - 12:49
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Writeup pet peeves

I thought it would be fun to prepare a list of pet-peeves for lab writeups to include in my lab manual after grading this last batch of lab reports. I figured, "tell them what you want" up front.  I do that, but some of these get missed, since they are more "tell them what you DON'T want."  So, here is my preliminary list.  Very tongue in cheek.  Not sure if I would edit them before putting them in the lab manual or not.  Probably not much.  Keep it light.  Thanks to Scott for the last one.

Does anybody want to add to the list or share their own?

 

 

Adam Johnson / Harvey Mudd College Thu, 05/15/2008 - 14:09
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