The complementary roles of laboratory notebooks and laboratory reports

McCormack, Jon; Morrow, Ruth; Bare, H.F.; Burns, Robin; Rasmussen, James L.

doi:10.1109/13.79894

Cited by 13 publications

(8 citation statements)

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“…There have been research efforts, outside of physics, that address the incorporation of scientific writing into lab courses, but much of this work has focused on summative forms of writing, such as lab reports. [4][5][6][7][8][9] Most of the work that directly addresses the development of notebook documentation skills can be found in chemistry [10][11][12][13][14] and engineering 15,16 education. Some of this literature places strong emphasis on the role of documentation for patent support and as a result is formulaic.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Recommendations for the use of notebooks in upper-division physics lab courses

Stanley

Lewandowski

2018

American Journal of Physics

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The use of lab notebooks for scientific documentation is a ubiquitous part of physics research. However, it is common for undergraduate physics laboratory courses not to emphasize the development of documentation skills, despite the fact that such courses are some of the earliest opportunities for students to start engaging in this practice. One potential impediment to the inclusion of explicit documentation training is that it may be unclear to instructors which features of authentic documentation practice are efficacious to teach and how to incorporate these features into the lab class environment. In this work, we outline some of the salient features of authentic documentation, informed by interviews with physics researchers, and provide recommendations for how these can be incorporated into the lab curriculum. We do not focus on structural details or templates for notebooks. Instead, we address holistic considerations for the purpose of scientific documentation that can guide students to develop their own documentation style. Taking into consideration all the aspects that can help improve students' documentation, it is also important to consider the design of the lab activities themselves. Students should have experience with implementing these authentic features of documentation during lab activities in order for them to find practice with documentation beneficial.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Recommendations for the use of notebooks in upper-division physics lab courses

Stanley

Lewandowski

2018

American Journal of Physics

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“…However, the electronic content is easier to search, to browse, and to copy; thus, electronic journals encourage further exploitation of their content. Laboratory journals take a privileged place in research and engineering practices [13]. They serve as chronological repositories for experimentation planning, realization, and performance evaluation [14].…”

Section: The Ejournal Collaboration Workpacementioning

confidence: 99%

Collaborative Web-Based Experimentation in Flexible Engineering Education

2005

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Abstract-The Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Lausanne, Switzerland, is deploying a flexible learning scheme for selected pilot courses in engineering education. In such a scheme, traditional lectures and written exercises are combined with additional Web-based learning resources. The main objective of this initiative is to sustain the evolution from traditional teaching to active learning and to better integrate the increasing number of educational resources available online. In engineering education, a key activity to sustain the learning process is hands-on experimentation carried out using either simulation tools or real equipment. This paper describes how a collaborative Web-based experimentation environment has been introduced at the EPFL for providing more flexibility to students performing laboratory experiments in automatic control, biomechanics, and fluid mechanics. It particularly describes the eJournal, a Web service integrated in the proposed learning environment that enables the collection and sharing of preparatory notes and experimental results with both peers and teaching assistants.

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“…Laboratory journals take a privileged place in science and engineering practices (McCormack et al, 1991;Myers et al, 1996). The laboratory notebook serves as a chronological repository for experimentation planning and realization.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Electronic Laboratory Journal: A Collaborative and Cooperative Learning Environment for Web-Based Experimentation

Fakas

Nguyễn

Gillet

2005

Comput Supported Coop Work

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Abstract. Numerous tools have been developed for supporting the collaboration between students in education, tools that mainly include facilities for sharing documents and enabling discussions. However, these environments do not emphasize the use of facilities that sustain collaborative work in the framework of remote experimentation carried out by a group of students located at different places. The Electronic Laboratory Journal (eJournal) paradigm proposed in this paper is a collaborative and cooperative environment for Web-based experimentation in engineering education. The eJournal enhances the traditional laboratory journal, by providing a group of students with Web-based tools to collect, annotate, organize and share the data chunks necessary to complete their experimentation assignments. The data chunks, called fragments, may be composed of numerous objects of any format, such as text, images, graphics, manuscripts, measurement logs or experimental results. Fragments can be uploaded from local disks or imported from Web components. The eJournal also handles the submission of results to the educators and facilitates remote supervision, assistance and tutoring of the students. The eJournal paradigm is currently assessed at the School of Engineering, the É cole Polytechnique Fe´de´rale de Lausanne (EPFL), in the framework of hands-on experimentation activities focusing on remote manipulation of real setups and Webbased simulation. This paper presents the eJournal environment, its application and its evaluation as an enabling Web-based application for flexible learning.

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The complementary roles of laboratory notebooks and laboratory reports

Cited by 13 publications

References 10 publications

Recommendations for the use of notebooks in upper-division physics lab courses

Recommendations for the use of notebooks in upper-division physics lab courses

Collaborative Web-Based Experimentation in Flexible Engineering Education

The Electronic Laboratory Journal: A Collaborative and Cooperative Learning Environment for Web-Based Experimentation

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