Laboratory Reports

Individual Assignment

Laboratory reports are individual assignments. After you have collected the data with your group, you must work on your own, producing your own analysis, graphs, and text. Copying code, text, or analysis from other group members is expressly forbidden.

Plagiarism

Please review the academic integrity section in the syllabus. Two important forms of academic misconduct relevant for the lab reports include

Reporting Mechanics

This course will require you to turn in hand-written reports using either pen or pencil. Reports are due on Monday at the beginning of the lab, at the date outlined in the syllabus.

The rubric may require either hand-drawn figures or computer-generated figures. Computer-generated figures must be printed and pasted into the blue book. Lab reports will be submitted in the form of an exam blue book. Free blue books can be picked up at the beginning of the course.

Report Grade

Each report has a specific rubric that outlines the required sections and components of the grade. In general the components are

1. Prelab Quiz

You will be given a shorter in-person version of the online prelab quiz. The points will count to your report grade.

2. Attendance

Attendance points. You will receive attendance points for Monday and Wednesday lab sessions.

3. Reading Log

Each lab has a required reading associated with it. Before writing the report, provide a reading log. The reading log should be completed prior to starting the lab and contain the following.

• Figure/Data Interpretation: Select one figure, table, or reaction from the text. What do you think this figure is showing? (Describe the variables, components, or process you observe.). What patterns, relationships, or trends do you notice?

• Mechanism: Choose one process, system, or reaction mechanism from the reading and explain how it works in your own words. Focus on cause-and-effect relationships or steps in the process.

• Mini Research: What result, claim, or observation in the reading surprised you? Find outside sources (scientific article, textbook, or reputable science site) related to this finding. What additional information did you learn?

• Reflection: Identify at least one concept that was challenging. What part of the reading was unclear? What specific question do you have about it?

4. Report

You will provide a hand-written report that is submitted on Monday at the beginning of the lab session on the date indicated in the syllabus. Detailed guidance is provided for each report. Don't forget to paste a copy of the grading rubric at the end of each report.

Rationale for Reporting Scheme

It may seem anachronistic that I request hand-written reports and that I take a strong stance against using AI. Writing by hand is difficult. I wrote the lab reports by hand and it made my hand hurt. It was significantly slower than writing it in a word processor. Computers and AI are powerful technologies that may appear to make your life easier. However, there is growing evidence that computers and AI may do far more harm than doing good in education. While the following sections focus more on the harms of AI, some of the concerns also apply to just using word processors.

The main concern with AI in education is that when relying on AI, students will never learn critical skills like original thinking, writing, or coding. Even more concerning, there is emerging evidence from a preliminary study that students who wrote essays with ChatGPT showed weaker brain connectivity, struggled to quote their own work, and consistently underperformed at neural, linguistic, and behavioral levels.$^1$ It is an existential threat to higher education because it facilitates plagiarism deployed at scale. Generative AI is tempting because it makes hard things seemingly easy. It provides an escape hatch for deadline pressure and the general feeling of being overwhelmed by the difficulty of an assigned task. Yet, a student that is cutting and pasting images and text from manuals or ChatGPT into a word document is enrolled in a class in cutting and pasting and not a university course. The bitter truth is that learning requires forcing ourselves to do hard things.

The cognitive science research and evidence from observing student behavior seems to be clear. Offloading the cognitive work reduces how much your brain engages with the task.$^1$ Conversely, taking handwritten notes, rather than typing, helps commit material to memory and leads to higher achievement.$^2$ Students are human beings. Nothing will stop them from using ChatGPT and other shortcuts if they are available.$^3$ For this reason it is time to force ourselves to slow down.

Writing by hand is thinking on paper.

Writing by hand has some amazing benefits. It requires us to first complete the analysis and organize the material before starting to write. Drafting figures with a pencil, and/or annotating graphs with pencil makes us pause and think about the data. Because handwriting is slower than typing, and less amenable to later reshuffling like we do in a word processor, it requires us to think more clearly about what we write. The assignments are individual because I want every student to have the benefit of fully understanding the experiment, analysis and implications. Because the reports are a significant amount of work, I have reduced the number of labs to three, thus freeing time for you to focus on analysis and reporting.

References

$^1$Kosmyna et al. (2025). Your Brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of Cognitive Debt when Using an AI Assistant for Essay Writing Task. arXiv preprint. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2506.08872.

$^2$Flanigan, A.E., Wheeler, J., Colliot, T. et al. Typed Versus Handwritten Lecture Notes and College Student Achievement: A Meta-Analysis. Educ Psychol Rev 36, 78 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-024-09914-w.

$^3$Clay Shirky: The Only Real Solution to the A.I. Cheating Crisis. NY Times.