Faculty and staff were surveyed to assess the professional development (PD) for teaching provided to biology graduate students at academic institutions. Although more than 90% of institutions provided PD, it was most often presemester and less than 10 h. Respondents most satisfied with their PD had programs with greater breadth and institutional support.
The traditional distinction between writing across the curriculum and writing in the disciplines (WID) as writing to learn versus learning to write understates WID's focus on learning in the disciplines. Advocates of WID have described learning as socialization, but little research addresses how writing disciplinary discourses in disciplinary settings encourages socialization into the disciplines. Data from interviews with students who wrote lab reports in a biology lab suggest five ways in which writing promotes learning in scientific disciplines. Drawing on theories of situated learning, the authors argue that apprenticeship genres can encourage socialization into disciplinary communities.
Laboratory reports have always been a part of the modern science and engineering curricula. However, it has also often been the least liked part of a students' (and instructors') laboratory experience. Despite research demonstrating the importance of lab reports to the undergraduate science and engineering lab experience, instructors are likely to minimize their use. Lab reports have been replaced with fill in the blank labs, reports that are worth only a token number of points towards a final grade, or excluded altogether. The LabWrite project has been developing online support materials to promote and support undergraduate lab report writing. A NSF-CCLI funded project, LabWrite is a web-based tool containing both static pages and an interactive tutor designed to support the lab report writing experience from before the student enters the lab through reviewing the graded lab report. Integral to LabWrite is a set of training materials for lab instructors, both faculty and graduate teaching assistants. Since 2000, LabWrite materials have been piloted in institutions ranging from Research I universities to community colleges. Our experiences and research have demonstrated the importance of lab reports in undergraduate education but have also pointed up the difficulties in successfully integrating lab reports back into courses.
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