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The Top 5 Online Writing Labs

Resources for Writers

• An Introduction to Punctuation
• Ph.D., Rhetoric and English, University of Georgia
• M.A., Modern English and American Literature, University of Leicester
• B.A., English, State University of New York

Many colleges and universities host exceptional online writing labs —or OWLs, as they are commonly called. The instructional materials and quizzes available at these sites are generally suitable for writers of all ages and at all academic levels. At the website of the International Writing Centers Association, you'll find links to more than 100 OWLs. Although most are housed in American colleges and universities, the list of international sites has been growing rapidly. Australia alone, for example, is home to a dozen online writing centers. Based on the experiences of our students, here are five of the very best OWLs.

The OWL at Purdue University

Created in 1995 by Dr. Muriel Harris, the OWL at Purdue is not only the oldest online writing lab but clearly one of the most comprehensive. The Purdue OWL "has become a complement to classroom instruction, a supplement to face-to-face tutorials, and a stand-alone reference for thousands of writers worldwide."

Guide to Grammar and Writing (Capital Community College)

Developed by the late Dr. Charles Darling in 1996 and now sponsored by the Capital Community College Foundation, the Guide to Grammar and Writing is a complete writing course online—and much more. One of the most useful features of the site is the abundance of self-tests and quizzes—all of which provide instant feedback.

The Excelsior College OWL

The most recent addition to our list of top sites, this multimedia OWL is remarkably attractive, informative, and engaging. Director Crystal Sands accurately observes that "the media-rich interactions and the writing video game surely make it a contender."

Writing@CSU (Colorado State University)

In addition to providing "more than 150 guides and interactive activities for writers," Writing@CSU hosts a rich collection of resources for instructors of composition . Faculty in all disciplines will find useful articles, assignments, and other teaching materials at the WAC Clearinghouse.

HyperGrammar (Writing Centre at the University of Ottawa in Canada)

The HyperGrammar site at the University of Ottawa is one of the best "electronic grammar courses" available to the general public. Easy to navigate and concisely written, the HyperGrammar explains and illustrates grammatical concepts accurately and clearly.

• Writers on Writing: The Art of Paragraphing
• Definition and Examples of Online Writing
• The 14 Best Community Colleges in California
• Moving Past the Five Paragraph Essay
• 7 Secrets to Success in English 101
• Owl Facts: Habitat, Behavior, Diet
• The 10 Best Journalism Schools for Undergraduates
• Guides for Students and Instructors in English 101
• Julia Donaldson's 'The Gruffalo' Picture Book Review
• Great Horned Owls Facts
• Definition and Examples of Paragraph Breaks in Prose
• What Science Courses Are Needed for College Admission?
• Writing a Paper about an Environmental Issue
• The 11 Best Film Schools in the U.S.
• Learn What the Student to Faculty Ratio Means (and What It Doesn't)
• Ottawa, the Capital City of Canada

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Sat / act prep online guides and tips, getting college essay help: important do's and don’ts.

College Essays

If you grow up to be a professional writer, everything you write will first go through an editor before being published. This is because the process of writing is really a process of re-writing —of rethinking and reexamining your work, usually with the help of someone else. So what does this mean for your student writing? And in particular, what does it mean for very important, but nonprofessional writing like your college essay? Should you ask your parents to look at your essay? Pay for an essay service?

If you are wondering what kind of help you can, and should, get with your personal statement, you've come to the right place! In this article, I'll talk about what kind of writing help is useful, ethical, and even expected for your college admission essay . I'll also point out who would make a good editor, what the differences between editing and proofreading are, what to expect from a good editor, and how to spot and stay away from a bad one.

Table of Contents

What Kind of Help for Your Essay Can You Get?

What's Good Editing?

What should an editor do for you, what kind of editing should you avoid, proofreading, what's good proofreading, what kind of proofreading should you avoid.

What Do Colleges Think Of You Getting Help With Your Essay?

Who Can/Should Help You?

Advice for editors.

Should You Pay Money For Essay Editing?

The Bottom Line

What's next, what kind of help with your essay can you get.

Rather than talking in general terms about "help," let's first clarify the two different ways that someone else can improve your writing . There is editing, which is the more intensive kind of assistance that you can use throughout the whole process. And then there's proofreading, which is the last step of really polishing your final product.

Let me go into some more detail about editing and proofreading, and then explain how good editors and proofreaders can help you."

Editing is helping the author (in this case, you) go from a rough draft to a finished work . Editing is the process of asking questions about what you're saying, how you're saying it, and how you're organizing your ideas. But not all editing is good editing . In fact, it's very easy for an editor to cross the line from supportive to overbearing and over-involved.

Ability to clarify assignments. A good editor is usually a good writer, and certainly has to be a good reader. For example, in this case, a good editor should make sure you understand the actual essay prompt you're supposed to be answering.

Open-endedness. Good editing is all about asking questions about your ideas and work, but without providing answers. It's about letting you stick to your story and message, and doesn't alter your point of view.

Think of an editor as a great travel guide. It can show you the many different places your trip could take you. It should explain any parts of the trip that could derail your trip or confuse the traveler. But it never dictates your path, never forces you to go somewhere you don't want to go, and never ignores your interests so that the trip no longer seems like it's your own. So what should good editors do?

Help Brainstorm Topics

Sometimes it's easier to bounce thoughts off of someone else. This doesn't mean that your editor gets to come up with ideas, but they can certainly respond to the various topic options you've come up with. This way, you're less likely to write about the most boring of your ideas, or to write about something that isn't actually important to you.

If you're wondering how to come up with options for your editor to consider, check out our guide to brainstorming topics for your college essay .

Help Revise Your Drafts

Here, your editor can't upset the delicate balance of not intervening too much or too little. It's tricky, but a great way to think about it is to remember: editing is about asking questions, not giving answers .

Revision questions should point out:

• Places where more detail or more description would help the reader connect with your essay
• Places where structure and logic don't flow, losing the reader's attention
• Places where there aren't transitions between paragraphs, confusing the reader
• Moments where your narrative or the arguments you're making are unclear

But pointing to potential problems is not the same as actually rewriting—editors let authors fix the problems themselves.

Bad editing is usually very heavy-handed editing. Instead of helping you find your best voice and ideas, a bad editor changes your writing into their own vision.

You may be dealing with a bad editor if they:

• Add material (examples, descriptions) that doesn't come from you
• Use a thesaurus to make your college essay sound "more mature"
• Add meaning or insight to the essay that doesn't come from you
• Tell you what to say and how to say it
• Write sentences, phrases, and paragraphs for you
• Change your voice in the essay so it no longer sounds like it was written by a teenager

Colleges can tell the difference between a 17-year-old's writing and a 50-year-old's writing. Not only that, they have access to your SAT or ACT Writing section, so they can compare your essay to something else you wrote. Writing that's a little more polished is great and expected. But a totally different voice and style will raise questions.

Where's the Line Between Helpful Editing and Unethical Over-Editing?

Sometimes it's hard to tell whether your college essay editor is doing the right thing. Here are some guidelines for staying on the ethical side of the line.

• An editor should say that the opening paragraph is kind of boring, and explain what exactly is making it drag. But it's overstepping for an editor to tell you exactly how to change it.
• An editor should point out where your prose is unclear or vague. But it's completely inappropriate for the editor to rewrite that section of your essay.
• An editor should let you know that a section is light on detail or description. But giving you similes and metaphors to beef up that description is a no-go.

Proofreading (also called copy-editing) is checking for errors in the last draft of a written work. It happens at the end of the process and is meant as the final polishing touch. Proofreading is meticulous and detail-oriented, focusing on small corrections. It sands off all the surface rough spots that could alienate the reader.

Because proofreading is usually concerned with making fixes on the word or sentence level, this is the only process where someone else can actually add to or take away things from your essay . This is because what they are adding or taking away tends to be one or two misplaced letters.

Laser focus. Proofreading is all about the tiny details, so the ability to really concentrate on finding small slip-ups is a must.

Excellent grammar and spelling skills. Proofreaders need to dot every "i" and cross every "t." Good proofreaders should correct spelling, punctuation, capitalization, and grammar. They should put foreign words in italics and surround quotations with quotation marks. They should check that you used the correct college's name, and that you adhered to any formatting requirements (name and date at the top of the page, uniform font and size, uniform spacing).

Limited interference. A proofreader needs to make sure that you followed any word limits. But if cuts need to be made to shorten the essay, that's your job and not the proofreader's.

A bad proofreader either tries to turn into an editor, or just lacks the skills and knowledge necessary to do the job.

Some signs that you're working with a bad proofreader are:

• If they suggest making major changes to the final draft of your essay. Proofreading happens when editing is already finished.
• If they aren't particularly good at spelling, or don't know grammar, or aren't detail-oriented enough to find someone else's small mistakes.
• If they start swapping out your words for fancier-sounding synonyms, or changing the voice and sound of your essay in other ways. A proofreader is there to check for errors, not to take the 17-year-old out of your writing.

What Do Colleges Think of Your Getting Help With Your Essay?

Admissions officers agree: light editing and proofreading are good—even required ! But they also want to make sure you're the one doing the work on your essay. They want essays with stories, voice, and themes that come from you. They want to see work that reflects your actual writing ability, and that focuses on what you find important.

On the Importance of Editing

Get feedback. Have a fresh pair of eyes give you some feedback. Don't allow someone else to rewrite your essay, but do take advantage of others' edits and opinions when they seem helpful. ( Bates College )

Read your essay aloud to someone. Reading the essay out loud offers a chance to hear how your essay sounds outside your head. This exercise reveals flaws in the essay's flow, highlights grammatical errors and helps you ensure that you are communicating the exact message you intended. ( Dickinson College )

On the Value of Proofreading

Share your essays with at least one or two people who know you well—such as a parent, teacher, counselor, or friend—and ask for feedback. Remember that you ultimately have control over your essays, and your essays should retain your own voice, but others may be able to catch mistakes that you missed and help suggest areas to cut if you are over the word limit. ( Yale University )

Proofread and then ask someone else to proofread for you. Although we want substance, we also want to be able to see that you can write a paper for our professors and avoid careless mistakes that would drive them crazy. ( Oberlin College )

On Watching Out for Too Much Outside Influence

Limit the number of people who review your essay. Too much input usually means your voice is lost in the writing style. ( Carleton College )

Ask for input (but not too much). Your parents, friends, guidance counselors, coaches, and teachers are great people to bounce ideas off of for your essay. They know how unique and spectacular you are, and they can help you decide how to articulate it. Keep in mind, however, that a 45-year-old lawyer writes quite differently from an 18-year-old student, so if your dad ends up writing the bulk of your essay, we're probably going to notice. ( Vanderbilt University )

Now let's talk about some potential people to approach for your college essay editing and proofreading needs. It's best to start close to home and slowly expand outward. Not only are your family and friends more invested in your success than strangers, but they also have a better handle on your interests and personality. This knowledge is key for judging whether your essay is expressing your true self.

Parents or Close Relatives

Your family may be full of potentially excellent editors! Parents are deeply committed to your well-being, and family members know you and your life well enough to offer details or incidents that can be included in your essay. On the other hand, the rewriting process necessarily involves criticism, which is sometimes hard to hear from someone very close to you.

A parent or close family member is a great choice for an editor if you can answer "yes" to the following questions. Is your parent or close relative a good writer or reader? Do you have a relationship where editing your essay won't create conflict? Are you able to constructively listen to criticism and suggestion from the parent?

One suggestion for defusing face-to-face discussions is to try working on the essay over email. Send your parent a draft, have them write you back some comments, and then you can pick which of their suggestions you want to use and which to discard.

Teachers or Tutors

A humanities teacher that you have a good relationship with is a great choice. I am purposefully saying humanities, and not just English, because teachers of Philosophy, History, Anthropology, and any other classes where you do a lot of writing, are all used to reviewing student work.

Moreover, any teacher or tutor that has been working with you for some time, knows you very well and can vet the essay to make sure it "sounds like you."

If your teacher or tutor has some experience with what college essays are supposed to be like, ask them to be your editor. If not, then ask whether they have time to proofread your final draft.

Guidance or College Counselor at Your School

The best thing about asking your counselor to edit your work is that this is their job. This means that they have a very good sense of what colleges are looking for in an application essay.

At the same time, school counselors tend to have relationships with admissions officers in many colleges, which again gives them insight into what works and which college is focused on what aspect of the application.

Unfortunately, in many schools the guidance counselor tends to be way overextended. If your ratio is 300 students to 1 college counselor, you're unlikely to get that person's undivided attention and focus. It is still useful to ask them for general advice about your potential topics, but don't expect them to be able to stay with your essay from first draft to final version.

Friends, Siblings, or Classmates

Although they most likely don't have much experience with what colleges are hoping to see, your peers are excellent sources for checking that your essay is you .

Friends and siblings are perfect for the read-aloud edit. Read your essay to them so they can listen for words and phrases that are stilted, pompous, or phrases that just don't sound like you.

You can even trade essays and give helpful advice on each other's work.

If your editor hasn't worked with college admissions essays very much, no worries! Any astute and attentive reader can still greatly help with your process. But, as in all things, beginners do better with some preparation.

First, your editor should read our advice about how to write a college essay introduction , how to spot and fix a bad college essay , and get a sense of what other students have written by going through some admissions essays that worked .

Then, as they read your essay, they can work through the following series of questions that will help them to guide you.

Introduction Questions

• Is the first sentence a killer opening line? Why or why not?
• Does the introduction hook the reader? Does it have a colorful, detailed, and interesting narrative? Or does it propose a compelling or surprising idea?
• Can you feel the author's voice in the introduction, or is the tone dry, dull, or overly formal? Show the places where the voice comes through.

Essay Body Questions

• Does the essay have a through-line? Is it built around a central argument, thought, idea, or focus? Can you put this idea into your own words?
• How is the essay organized? By logical progression? Chronologically? Do you feel order when you read it, or are there moments where you are confused or lose the thread of the essay?
• Does the essay have both narratives about the author's life and explanations and insight into what these stories reveal about the author's character, personality, goals, or dreams? If not, which is missing?
• Does the essay flow? Are there smooth transitions/clever links between paragraphs? Between the narrative and moments of insight?

Reader Response Questions

• Does the writer's personality come through? Do we know what the speaker cares about? Do we get a sense of "who he or she is"?
• Where did you feel most connected to the essay? Which parts of the essay gave you a "you are there" sensation by invoking your senses? What moments could you picture in your head well?
• Where are the details and examples vague and not specific enough?
• Did you get an "a-ha!" feeling anywhere in the essay? Is there a moment of insight that connected all the dots for you? Is there a good reveal or "twist" anywhere in the essay?
• What are the strengths of this essay? What needs the most improvement?

Should You Pay Money for Essay Editing?

One alternative to asking someone you know to help you with your college essay is the paid editor route. There are two different ways to pay for essay help: a private essay coach or a less personal editing service , like the many proliferating on the internet.

My advice is to think of these options as a last resort rather than your go-to first choice. I'll first go through the reasons why. Then, if you do decide to go with a paid editor, I'll help you decide between a coach and a service.

When to Consider a Paid Editor

In general, I think hiring someone to work on your essay makes a lot of sense if none of the people I discussed above are a possibility for you.

If you can't ask your parents. For example, if your parents aren't good writers, or if English isn't their first language. Or if you think getting your parents to help is going create unnecessary extra conflict in your relationship with them (applying to college is stressful as it is!)

If you can't ask your teacher or tutor. Maybe you don't have a trusted teacher or tutor that has time to look over your essay with focus. Or, for instance, your favorite humanities teacher has very limited experience with college essays and so won't know what admissions officers want to see.

If you can't ask your guidance counselor. This could be because your guidance counselor is way overwhelmed with other students.

If you can't share your essay with those who know you. It might be that your essay is on a very personal topic that you're unwilling to share with parents, teachers, or peers. Just make sure it doesn't fall into one of the bad-idea topics in our article on bad college essays .

If the cost isn't a consideration. Many of these services are quite expensive, and private coaches even more so. If you have finite resources, I'd say that hiring an SAT or ACT tutor (whether it's PrepScholar or someone else) is better way to spend your money . This is because there's no guarantee that a slightly better essay will sufficiently elevate the rest of your application, but a significantly higher SAT score will definitely raise your applicant profile much more.

Should You Hire an Essay Coach?

On the plus side, essay coaches have read dozens or even hundreds of college essays, so they have experience with the format. Also, because you'll be working closely with a specific person, it's more personal than sending your essay to a service, which will know even less about you.

But, on the minus side, you'll still be bouncing ideas off of someone who doesn't know that much about you . In general, if you can adequately get the help from someone you know, there is no advantage to paying someone to help you.

If you do decide to hire a coach, ask your school counselor, or older students that have used the service for recommendations. If you can't afford the coach's fees, ask whether they can work on a sliding scale —many do. And finally, beware those who guarantee admission to your school of choice—essay coaches don't have any special magic that can back up those promises.

Should You Send Your Essay to a Service?

On the plus side, essay editing services provide a similar product to essay coaches, and they cost significantly less . If you have some assurance that you'll be working with a good editor, the lack of face-to-face interaction won't prevent great results.

On the minus side, however, it can be difficult to gauge the quality of the service before working with them . If they are churning through many application essays without getting to know the students they are helping, you could end up with an over-edited essay that sounds just like everyone else's. In the worst case scenario, an unscrupulous service could send you back a plagiarized essay.

Getting recommendations from friends or a school counselor for reputable services is key to avoiding heavy-handed editing that writes essays for you or does too much to change your essay. Including a badly-edited essay like this in your application could cause problems if there are inconsistencies. For example, in interviews it might be clear you didn't write the essay, or the skill of the essay might not be reflected in your schoolwork and test scores.

Should You Buy an Essay Written by Someone Else?

Let me elaborate. There are super sketchy places on the internet where you can simply buy a pre-written essay. Don't do this!

For one thing, you'll be lying on an official, signed document. All college applications make you sign a statement saying something like this:

I certify that all information submitted in the admission process—including the application, the personal essay, any supplements, and any other supporting materials—is my own work, factually true, and honestly presented... I understand that I may be subject to a range of possible disciplinary actions, including admission revocation, expulsion, or revocation of course credit, grades, and degree, should the information I have certified be false. (From the Common Application )

For another thing, if your academic record doesn't match the essay's quality, the admissions officer will start thinking your whole application is riddled with lies.

Admission officers have full access to your writing portion of the SAT or ACT so that they can compare work that was done in proctored conditions with that done at home. They can tell if these were written by different people. Not only that, but there are now a number of search engines that faculty and admission officers can use to see if an essay contains strings of words that have appeared in other essays—you have no guarantee that the essay you bought wasn't also bought by 50 other students.

• You should get college essay help with both editing and proofreading
• A good editor will ask questions about your idea, logic, and structure, and will point out places where clarity is needed
• A good editor will absolutely not answer these questions, give you their own ideas, or write the essay or parts of the essay for you
• A good proofreader will find typos and check your formatting
• All of them agree that getting light editing and proofreading is necessary
• Parents, teachers, guidance or college counselor, and peers or siblings
• If you can't ask any of those, you can pay for college essay help, but watch out for services or coaches who over-edit you work
• Don't buy a pre-written essay! Colleges can tell, and it'll make your whole application sound false.

Ready to start working on your essay? Check out our explanation of the point of the personal essay and the role it plays on your applications and then explore our step-by-step guide to writing a great college essay .

Using the Common Application for your college applications? We have an excellent guide to the Common App essay prompts and useful advice on how to pick the Common App prompt that's right for you . Wondering how other people tackled these prompts? Then work through our roundup of over 130 real college essay examples published by colleges .

Stressed about whether to take the SAT again before submitting your application? Let us help you decide how many times to take this test . If you choose to go for it, we have the ultimate guide to studying for the SAT to give you the ins and outs of the best ways to study.

Anna scored in the 99th percentile on her SATs in high school, and went on to major in English at Princeton and to get her doctorate in English Literature at Columbia. She is passionate about improving student access to higher education.

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America's Lab Report: Investigations in High School Science (2006)

Chapter: 3 laboratory experiences and student learning, 3 laboratory experiences and student learning.

In this chapter, the committee first identifies and clarifies the learning goals of laboratory experiences and then discusses research evidence on attainment of those goals. The review of research evidence draws on three major strands of research: (1) cognitive research illuminating how students learn; (2) studies that examine laboratory experiences that stand alone, separate from the flow of classroom science instruction; and (3) research projects that sequence laboratory experiences with other forms of science instruction. 1 We propose the phrase “integrated instructional units” to describe these research and design projects that integrate laboratory experiences within a sequence of science instruction. In the following section of this chapter, we present design principles for laboratory experiences derived from our analysis of these multiple strands of research and suggest that laboratory experiences designed according to these principles are most likely to accomplish their learning goals. Next we consider the role of technology in supporting student learning from laboratory experiences. The chapter concludes with a summary.

GOALS FOR LABORATORY EXPERIENCES

Laboratories have been purported to promote a number of goals for students, most of which are also the goals of science education in general (Lunetta, 1998; Hofstein and Lunetta, 1982). The committee commissioned a paper to examine the definition and goals of laboratory experiences (Millar, 2004) and also considered research reviews on laboratory education that have identified and discussed learning goals (Anderson, 1976; Hofstein and Lunetta, 1982; Lazarowitz and Tamir, 1994; Shulman and Tamir, 1973). While these inventories of goals vary somewhat, a core set remains fairly consistent. Building on these commonly stated goals, the committee developed a comprehensive list of goals for or desired outcomes of laboratory experiences:

Enhancing mastery of subject matter . Laboratory experiences may enhance student understanding of specific scientific facts and concepts and of the way in which these facts and concepts are organized in the scientific disciplines.

Developing scientific reasoning . Laboratory experiences may promote a student’s ability to identify questions and concepts that guide scientific

investigations; to design and conduct scientific investigations; to develop and revise scientific explanations and models; to recognize and analyze alternative explanations and models; and to make and defend a scientific argument. Making a scientific argument includes such abilities as writing, reviewing information, using scientific language appropriately, constructing a reasoned argument, and responding to critical comments.

Understanding the complexity and ambiguity of empirical work . Interacting with the unconstrained environment of the material world in laboratory experiences may help students concretely understand the inherent complexity and ambiguity of natural phenomena. Laboratory experiences may help students learn to address the challenges inherent in directly observing and manipulating the material world, including troubleshooting equipment used to make observations, understanding measurement error, and interpreting and aggregating the resulting data.

Developing practical skills . In laboratory experiences, students may learn to use the tools and conventions of science. For example, they may develop skills in using scientific equipment correctly and safely, making observations, taking measurements, and carrying out well-defined scientific procedures.

Understanding of the nature of science . Laboratory experiences may help students to understand the values and assumptions inherent in the development and interpretation of scientific knowledge, such as the idea that science is a human endeavor that seeks to understand the material world and that scientific theories, models, and explanations change over time on the basis of new evidence.

Cultivating interest in science and interest in learning science . As a result of laboratory experiences that make science “come alive,” students may become interested in learning more about science and see it as relevant to everyday life.

Developing teamwork abilities . Laboratory experiences may also promote a student’s ability to collaborate effectively with others in carrying out complex tasks, to share the work of the task, to assume different roles at different times, and to contribute and respond to ideas.

Although most of these goals were derived from previous research on laboratory experiences and student learning, the committee identified the new goal of “understanding the complexity and ambiguity of empirical work” to reflect the unique nature of laboratory experiences. Students’ direct encounters with natural phenomena in laboratory science courses are inherently more ambiguous and messy than the representations of these phenomena in science lectures, textbooks, and mathematical formulas (Millar, 2004). The committee thinks that developing students’ ability to recognize this complexity and develop strategies for sorting through it is an essential

goal of laboratory experiences. Unlike the other goals, which coincide with the goals of science education more broadly and may be advanced through lectures, reading, or other forms of science instruction, laboratory experiences may be the only way to advance the goal of helping students understand the complexity and ambiguity of empirical work.

RECENT DEVELOPMENTS IN RESEARCH AND DESIGN OF LABORATORY EXPERIENCES

In reviewing evidence on the extent to which students may attain the goals of laboratory experiences listed above, the committee identified a recent shift in the research. Historically, laboratory experiences have been separate from the flow of classroom science instruction and often lacked clear learning goals. Because this approach remains common today, we refer to these isolated interactions with natural phenomena as “typical” laboratory experiences. 2 Reflecting this separation, researchers often engaged students in one or two experiments or other science activities and then conducted assessments to determine whether their understanding of the science concept underlying the activity had increased. Some studies directly compared measures of student learning following laboratory experiences with measures of student learning following lectures, discussions, videotapes, or other methods of science instruction in an effort to determine which modes of instruction were most effective.

Over the past 10 years, some researchers have shifted their focus. Assuming that the study of the natural world requires opportunities to directly encounter that world, investigators are integrating laboratory experiences and other forms of instruction into instructional sequences in order to help students progress toward science learning goals. These studies draw on principles of learning derived from the rapid growth in knowledge from cognitive research to address the question of how to design science instruction, including laboratory experiences, in order to support student learning.

Given the complexity of these teaching and learning sequences, the committee struggled with how best to describe them. Initially, the committee used the term “science curriculum units.” However, that term failed to convey the importance of integration in this approach to sequencing laboratory experiences with other forms of teaching and learning. The research reviewed by the committee indicated that these curricula not only integrate laboratory experiences in the flow of science instruction, but also integrate

student learning about both the concepts and processes of science. To reflect these aspects of the new approach, the committee settled on the term “integrated instructional units” in this report.

The following sections briefly describe principles of learning derived from recent research in the cognitive sciences and their application in design of integrated instructional units.

Principles of Learning Informing Integrated Instructional Units

Recent research and development of integrated instructional units that incorporate laboratory experiences are based on a large and growing body of cognitive research. This research has led to development of a coherent and multifaceted theory of learning that recognizes that prior knowledge, context, language, and social processes play critical roles in cognitive development and learning (National Research Council, 1999). Taking each of these factors into account, the National Research Council (NRC) report How People Learn identifies four critical principles that support effective learning environments (Glaser, 1994; National Research Council, 1999), and a more recent NRC report, How Students Learn , considers these principles as they relate specifically to science (National Research Council, 2005). These four principles are summarized below.

Learner-Centered Environments

The emerging integrated instructional units are designed to be learner-centered. This principle is based on research showing that effective instruction begins with what learners bring to the setting, including cultural practices and beliefs, as well as knowledge of academic content. Taking students’ preconceptions into account is particularly critical in science instruction. Students come to the classroom with conceptions of natural phenomena that are based on their everyday experiences in the world. Although these conceptions are often reasonable and can provide satisfactory everyday explanations to students, they do not always match scientific explanations and break down in ways that students often fail to notice. Teachers face the challenge of engaging with these intuitive ideas, some of which are more firmly rooted than others, in order to help students move toward a more scientific understanding. In this way, understanding scientific knowledge often requires a change in—not just an addition to—what students notice and understand about the world (National Research Council, 2005).

Knowledge-Centered Environments

The developing integrated instructional units are based on the principle that learning is enhanced when the environment is knowledge-centered. That is, the laboratory experiences and other instruction included in integrated instructional units are designed to help students learn with understanding, rather than simply acquiring sets of disconnected facts and skills (National Research Council, 1999).

In science, the body of knowledge with which students must engage includes accepted scientific ideas about natural phenomena as well as an understanding of what it means to “do science.” These two aspects of science are reflected in the goals of laboratory experiences, which include mastery of subject matter (accepted scientific ideas about phenomena) and several goals related to the processes of science (understanding the complexity of empirical work, development of scientific reasoning). Research on student thinking about science shows a progression of ideas about scientific knowledge and how it is justified. At the first stage, students perceive scientific knowledge as right or wrong. Later, students characterize discrepant ideas and evidence as “mere opinion.” Eventually, students recognize scientific knowledge as being justified by evidence derived through rigorous research. Several studies have shown that a large proportion of high school students are at the first stage in their views of scientific knowledge (National Research Council, 2005).

Knowledge-centered environments encourage students to reflect on their own learning progress (metacognition). Learning is facilitated when individuals identify, monitor, and regulate their own thinking and learning. To be effective problem solvers and learners, students need to determine what they already know and what else they need to know in any given situation, including when things are not going as expected. For example, students with better developed metacognitive strategies will abandon an unproductive problem-solving strategy very quickly and substitute a more productive one, whereas students with less effective metacognitive skills will continue to use the same strategy long after it has failed to produce results (Gobert and Clement, 1999). The basic metacognitive strategies include: (1) connecting new information to former knowledge, (2) selecting thinking strategies deliberately, and (3) monitoring one’s progress during problem solving.

A final aspect of knowledge-centered learning, which may be particularly relevant to integrated instructional units, is that the practices and activities in which people engage while learning shape what they learn. Transfer (the ability to apply learning in varying situations) is made possible to the extent that knowledge and learning are grounded in multiple contexts. Transfer is more difficult when a concept is taught in a limited set of contexts or through a limited set of activities. By encountering the same concept at work in multiple contexts (such as in laboratory experiences and in discussion),

students can develop a deeper understanding of the concept and how it can be used as well as the ability to transfer what has been learned in one context to others (Bransford and Schwartz, 2001).

Assessment to Support Learning

Another important principle of learning that has informed development of integrated instructional units is that assessment can be used to support learning. Cognitive research has shown that feedback is fundamental to learning, but feedback opportunities are scarce in most classrooms. This research indicates that formative assessments provide students with opportunities to revise and improve the quality of their thinking while also making their thinking apparent to teachers, who can then plan instruction accordingly. Assessments must reflect the learning goals of the learning environment. If the goal is to enhance understanding and the applicability of knowledge, it is not sufficient to provide assessments that focus primarily on memory for facts and formulas. The Thinkertools science instructional unit discussed in the following section incorporates this principle, including formative self-assessment tools that help students advance toward several of the goals of laboratory experiences.

Community-Centered Environments

Research has shown that learning is enhanced in a community setting, when students and teachers share norms that value knowledge and participation (see Cobb et al., 2001). Such norms increase people’s opportunities and motivation to interact, receive feedback, and learn. Learning is enhanced when students have multiple opportunities to articulate their ideas to peers and to hear and discuss others’ ideas. A community-centered classroom environment may not be organized in traditional ways. For example, in science classrooms, the teacher is often the sole authority and arbiter of scientific knowledge, placing students in a relatively passive role (Lemke, 1990). Such an organization may promote students’ view that scientific knowledge is a collection of facts about the world, authorized by expert scientists and irrelevant to students’ own experience. The instructional units discussed below have attempted to restructure the social organization of the classroom and encourage students and the teacher to interact and learn from each other.

Design of Integrated Instructional Units

The learning principles outlined above have begun to inform design of integrated instructional units that include laboratory experiences with other types of science learning activities. These integrated instructional units were

developed through research programs that tightly couple research, design, and implementation in an iterative process. The research programs are beginning to document the details of student learning, development, and interaction when students are given systematic support—or scaffolding—in carefully structured social and cognitive activities. Scaffolding helps to guide students’ thinking, so that they can gradually take on more autonomy in carrying out various parts of the activities. Emerging research on these integrated instructional units provides guidance about how to design effective learning environments for real-world educational settings (see Linn, Davis, and Bell, 2004a; Cobb et al., 2003; Design-Based Research Collective, 2003).

Integrated instructional units interweave laboratory experiences with other types of science learning activities, including lectures, reading, and discussion. Students are engaged in framing research questions, designing and executing experiments, gathering and analyzing data, and constructing arguments and conclusions as they carry out investigations. Diagnostic, formative assessments are embedded into the instructional sequences and can be used to gauge student’s developing understanding and to promote their self-reflection on their thinking.

With respect to laboratory experiences, these instructional units share two key features. The first is that specific laboratory experiences are carefully selected on the basis of research-based ideas of what students are likely to learn from them. For example, any particular laboratory activity is likely to contribute to learning only if it engages students’ current thinking about the target phenomena and is likely to make them critically evaluate their ideas in relation to what they see during the activity. The second is that laboratory experiences are explicitly linked to and integrated with other learning activities in the unit. The assumption behind this second feature is that just because students do a laboratory activity, they may not necessarily understand what they have done. Nascent research on integrated instructional units suggests that both framing a particular laboratory experience ahead of time and following it with activities that help students make sense of the experience are crucial in using a laboratory experience to support science learning. This “integration” approach draws on earlier research showing that intervention and negotiation with an authority, usually a teacher, was essential to help students make meaning out of their laboratory activities (Driver, 1995).

Examples of Integrated Instructional Units

Scaling up chemistry that applies.

Chemistry That Applies (CTA) is a 6-8 week integrated instructional unit designed to help students in grades 8-10 understand the law of conservation

of matter. Created by researchers at the Michigan Department of Education (Blakeslee et al., 1993), this instructional unit was one of only a few curricula that were highly rated by American Assocation for the Advancement of Science Project 2061 in its study of middle school science curricula (Kesidou and Roseman, 2002). Student groups explore four chemical reactions—burning, rusting, the decomposition of water, and the volcanic reaction of baking soda and vinegar. They cause these reactions to happen, obtain and record data in individual notebooks, analyze the data, and use evidence-based arguments to explain the data.

The instructional unit engages the students in a carefully structured sequence of hands-on laboratory investigations interwoven with other forms of instruction (Lynch, 2004). Student understanding is “pressed” through many experiences with the reactions and by group and individual pressures to make meaning of these reactions. For example, video transcripts indicate that students engaged in “science talk” during teacher demonstrations and during student experiments.

Researchers at George Washington University, in a partnership with Montgomery County public schools in Maryland, are currently conducting a five-year study of the feasibility of scaling up effective integrated instructional units, including CTA (Lynch, Kuipers, Pyke, and Szesze, in press). In 2001-2002, CTA was implemented in five highly diverse middle schools that were matched with five comparison schools using traditional curriculum materials in a quasi-experimental research design. All 8th graders in the five CTA schools, a total of about 1,500 students, participated in the CTA curriculum, while all 8th graders in the matched schools used the science curriculum materials normally available. Students were given pre- and posttests.

In 2002-2003, the study was replicated in the same five pairs of schools. In both years, students who participated in the CTA curriculum scored significantly higher than comparison students on a posttest. Average scores of students who participated in the CTA curriculum showed higher levels of fluency with the concept of conservation of matter (Lynch, 2004). However, because the concept is so difficult, most students in both the treatment and control group still have misconceptions, and few have a flexible, fully scientific understanding of the conservation of matter. All subgroups of students who were engaged in the CTA curriculum—including low-income students (eligible for free and reduced-price meals), black and Hispanic students, English language learners, and students eligible for special educational services—scored significantly higher than students in the control group on the posttest (Lynch and O’Donnell, 2005). The effect sizes were largest among three subgroups considered at risk for low science achievement, including Hispanic students, low-income students, and English language learners.

Based on these encouraging results, CTA was scaled up to include about 6,000 8th graders in 20 schools in 2003-2004 and 12,000 8th graders in 37 schools in 2004-2005 (Lynch and O’Donnell, 2005).

ThinkerTools

The ThinkerTools instructional unit is a sequence of laboratory experiences and other learning activities that, in its initial version, yielded substantial gains in students’ understanding of Newton’s laws of motion (White, 1993). Building on these positive results, ThinkerTools was expanded to focus not only on mastery of these laws of motion but also on scientific reasoning and understanding of the nature of science (White and Frederiksen, 1998). In the 10-week unit, students were guided to reflect on their own thinking and learning while they carry out a series of investigations. The integrated instructional unit was designed to help them learn about science processes as well as about the subject of force and motion. The instructional unit supports students as they formulate hypotheses, conduct empirical investigations, work with conceptually analogous computer simulations, and refine a conceptual model for the phenomena. Across the series of investigations, the integrated instructional unit introduces increasingly complex concepts. Formative assessments are integrated throughout the instructional sequence in ways that allow students to self-assess and reflect on core aspects of inquiry and epistemological dimensions of learning.

Researchers investigated the impact of Thinker Tools in 12 7th, 8th, and 9th grade classrooms with 3 teachers and 343 students. The researchers evaluated students’ developing understanding of scientific investigations using a pre-post inquiry test. In this assessment, students were engaged in a thought experiment that asked them to conceptualize, design, and think through a hypothetical research study. Gains in scores for students in the reflective self-assessment classes and control classrooms were compared. Results were also broken out by students categorized as high and low achieving, based on performance on a standardized test conducted before the intervention. Students in the reflective self-assessment classes exhibited greater gains on a test of investigative skills. This was especially true for low-achieving students. The researchers further analyzed specific components of the associated scientific processes—formulation of hypotheses, designing an experiment, predicting results, drawing conclusions from made-up results, and relating those conclusions back to the original hypotheses. Students in the reflective-self-assessment classes did better on all of these components than those in control classrooms, especially on the more difficult components (drawing conclusions and relating them to the original hypotheses).

Computer as Learning Partner

Beginning in 1980, a large group of technologists, classroom teachers, and education researchers developed the Computer as Learning Partner (CLP)

integrated instructional unit. Over 10 years, the team developed and tested eight versions of a 12-week unit on thermodynamics. Each year, a cohort of about 300 8th grade students participated in a sequence of teaching and learning activities focused primarily on a specific learning goal—enhancing students’ understanding of the difference between heat and temperature (Linn, 1997). The project engaged students in a sequence of laboratory experiences supported by computers, discussions, and other forms of science instruction. For example, computer images and words prompted students to make predictions about heat and conductivity and perform experiments using temperature-sensitive probes to confirm or refute their predictions. Students were given tasks related to scientific phenomena affecting their daily lives—such as how to keep a drink cold for lunch or selecting appropriate clothing for hiking in the mountains—as a way to motivate their interest and curiosity. Teachers play an important role in carrying out the curriculum, asking students to critique their own and each others’ investigations and encouraging them to reflect on their own thinking.

Over 10 years of study and revision, the integrated instructional unit proved increasingly effective in achieving its stated learning goals. Before the sequenced instruction was introduced, only 3 percent of middle school students could adequately explain the difference between heat and temperature. Eight versions later, about half of the students participating in CLP could explain this difference, representing a 400 percent increase in achievement. In addition, nearly 100 percent of students who participated in the final version of the instructional unit demonstrated understanding of conductors (Linn and Songer, 1991). By comparison, only 25 percent of a group of undergraduate chemistry students at the University of California at Berkeley could adequately explain the difference between heat and temperature. A longitudinal study comparing high school seniors who participated in the thermodynamics unit in middle school with seniors who had received more traditional middle school science instruction found a 50 percent improvement in CLP students’ performance in distinguishing between heat and temperature (Linn and Hsi, 2000)

Participating in the CLP instructional unit also increased students’ interest in science. Longitudinal studies of CLP participants revealed that, among those who went on to take high school physics, over 90 percent thought science was relevant to their lives. And 60 percent could provide examples of scientific phenomena in their daily lives. By comparison, only 60 percent of high school physics students who had not participated in the unit during middle school thought science was relevant to their lives, and only 30 percent could give examples in their daily lives (Linn and Hsi, 2000).

EFFECTIVENESS OF LABORATORY EXPERIENCES

Description of the literature review.

The committee’s review of the literature on the effectiveness of laboratory experiences considered studies of typical laboratory experiences and emerging research focusing on integrated instructional units. In reviewing both bodies of research, we aim to specify how laboratory experiences can further each of the science learning goals outlined at the beginning of this chapter.

Limitations of the Research

Our review was complicated by weaknesses in the earlier research on typical laboratory experiences, isolated from the stream of instruction (Hofstein and Lunetta, 1982). First, the investigators do not agree on a precise definition of the “laboratory” experiences under study. Second, many studies were weak in the selection and control of variables. Investigators failed to examine or report important variables relating to student abilities and attitudes. For example, they failed to note students’ prior laboratory experiences. They also did not give enough attention to extraneous factors that might affect student outcomes, such as instruction outside the laboratory. Third, the studies of typical laboratory experiences usually involved a small group of students with little diversity, making it difficult to generalize the results to the large, diverse population of U.S. high schools today. Fourth, investigators did not give enough attention to the adequacy of the instruments used to measure student outcomes. As an example, paper and pencil tests that focus on testing mastery of subject matter, the most frequently used assessment, do not capture student attainment of all of the goals we have identified. Such tests are not able to measure student progress toward goals that may be unique to laboratory experiences, such as developing scientific reasoning, understanding the complexity and ambiguity of empirical work, and development of practical skills.

Finally, most of the available research on typical laboratory experiences does not fully describe these activities. Few studies have examined teacher behavior, the classroom learning environment, or variables identifying teacher-student interaction. In addition, few recent studies have focused on laboratory manuals—both what is in them and how they are used. Research on the intended design of laboratory experiences, their implementation, and whether the implementation resembles the initial design would provide the understanding needed to guide improvements in laboratory instruction. However, only a few studies of typical laboratory experiences have measured the effectiveness of particular laboratory experiences in terms of both the extent

to which their activities match those that the teacher intended and the extent to which the students’ learning matches the learning objectives of the activity (Tiberghien, Veillard, Le Marchal, Buty, and Millar, 2000).

We also found weaknesses in the evolving research on integrated instructional units. First, these new units tend to be hothouse projects; researchers work intensively with teachers to construct atypical learning environments. While some have been developed and studied over a number of years and iterations, they usually involve relatively small samples of students. Only now are some of these efforts expanding to a scale that will allow robust generalizations about their value and how best to implement them. Second, these integrated instructional units have not been designed specifically to contrast some version of laboratory or practical experience with a lack of such experience. Rather, they assume that educational interventions are complex, systemic “packages” (Salomon, 1996) involving many interactions that may influence specific outcomes, and that science learning requires some opportunities for direct engagement with natural phenomena. Researchers commonly aim to document the complex interactions between and among students, teachers, laboratory materials, and equipment in an effort to develop profiles of successful interventions (Cobb et al., 2003; Collins, Joseph, and Bielaczyc, 2004; Design-Based Research Collective, 2003). These newer studies focus on how to sequence laboratory experiences and other forms of science instruction to support students’ science learning.

Scope of the Literature Search

A final note on the review of research: the scope of our study did not allow for an in-depth review of all of the individual studies of laboratory education conducted over the past 30 years. Fortunately, three major reviews of the literature from the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s are available (Lazarowitz and Tamir, 1994; Lunetta, 1998; Hofstein and Lunetta, 2004). The committee relied on these reviews in our analysis of studies published before 1994. To identify studies published between 1994 and 2004, the committee searched electronic databases.

To supplement the database search, the committee commissioned three experts to review the nascent body of research on integrated instructional units (Bell, 2005; Duschl, 2004; Millar, 2004). We also invited researchers who are currently developing, revising, and studying the effectiveness of integrated instructional units to present their findings at committee meetings (Linn, 2004; Lynch, 2004).

All of these activities yielded few studies that focused on the high school level and were conducted in the United States. For this reason, the committee expanded the range of the literature considered to include some studies targeted at middle school and some international studies. We included stud-

ies at the elementary through postsecondary levels as well as studies of teachers’ learning in our analysis. In drawing conclusions from studies that were not conducted at the high school level, the committee took into consideration the extent to which laboratory experiences in high school differ from those in elementary and postsecondary education. Developmental differences among students, the organizational structure of schools, and the preparation of teachers are a few of the many factors that vary by school level and that the committee considered in making inferences from the available research. Similarly, when deliberating on studies conducted outside the United States, we considered differences in the science curriculum, the organization of schools, and other factors that might influence the outcomes of laboratory education.

Mastery of Subject Matter

Evidence from research on typical laboratory experiences.

Claims that typical laboratory experiences help students master science content rest largely on the argument that opportunities to directly interact with, observe, and manipulate materials will help students to better grasp difficult scientific concepts. It is believed that these experiences will force students to confront their misunderstandings about phenomena and shift toward more scientific understanding.

Despite these claims, there is almost no direct evidence that typical laboratory experiences that are isolated from the flow of science instruction are particularly valuable for learning specific scientific content (Hofstein and Lunetta, 1982, 2004; Lazarowitz and Tamir, 1994). White (1996) points out that many major reviews of science education from the 1960s and 1970s indicate that laboratory work does little to improve understanding of science content as measured by paper and pencil tests, and later studies from the 1980s and early 1990s do not challenge this view. Other studies indicate that typical laboratory experiences are no more effective in helping students master science subject matter than demonstrations in high school biology (Coulter, 1966), demonstration and discussion (Yager, Engen, and Snider, 1969), and viewing filmed experiments in chemistry (Ben-Zvi, Hofstein, Kempa, and Samuel, 1976). In contrast to most of the research, a single comparative study (Freedman, 2002) found that students who received regular laboratory instruction over the course of a school year performed better on a test of physical science knowledge than a control group of students who took a similar physical science course without laboratory activities.

Clearly, most of the evidence does not support the argument that typical laboratory experiences lead to improved learning of science content. More specifically, concrete experiences with phenomena alone do not appear to

force students to confront their misunderstandings and reevaluate their own assumptions. For example, VandenBerg, Katu, and Lunetta (1994) reported, on the basis of clinical studies with individual students, that hands-on activities with introductory electricity materials facilitated students’ understanding of the relationships among circuit elements and variables. The carefully selected practical activities created conceptual conflict in students’ minds—a first step toward changing their naïve ideas about electricity. However, the students remained unable to develop a fully scientific mental model of a circuit system. The authors suggested that greater engagement with conceptual organizers, such as analogies and concept maps, could have helped students develop more scientific understandings of basic electricity. Several researchers, including Dupin and Joshua (1987), have reported similar findings. Studies indicate that students often hold beliefs so intensely that even their observations in the laboratory are strongly influenced by those beliefs (Champagne, Gunstone, and Klopfer, 1985, cited in Lunetta, 1998; Linn, 1997). Students tend to adjust their observations to fit their current beliefs rather than change their beliefs in the face of conflicting observations.

Evidence from Research on Integrated Instructional Units

Current integrated instructional units build on earlier studies that found integration of laboratory experiences with other instructional activities enhanced mastery of subject matter (Dupin and Joshua, 1987; White and Gunstone, 1992, cited in Lunetta, 1998). A recent review of these and other studies concluded (Hofstein and Lunetta, 2004, p. 33):

When laboratory experiences are integrated with other metacognitive learning experiences such as “predict-observe-explain” demonstrations (White and Gunstone, 1992) and when they incorporate the manipulation of ideas instead of simply materials and procedures, they can promote the learning of science.

Integrated instructional units often focus on complex science topics that are difficult for students to understand. Their design is based on research on students’ intuitive conceptions of a science topic and how those conceptions differ from scientific conceptions. Students’ ideas often do not match the scientific understanding of a phenomenon and, as noted previously, these intuitive notions are resistant to change. For this reason, the sequenced units incorporate instructional activities specifically designed to confront intuitive conceptions and provide an environment in which students can construct normative conceptions. The role of laboratory experiences is to emphasize the discrepancies between students’ intuitive ideas about the topic and scientific ideas, as well as to support their construction of normative understanding. In order to help students link formal, scientific concepts to real

phenomena, these units include a sequence of experiences that will push them to question their intuitive and often inaccurate ideas.

Emerging studies indicate that exposure to these integrated instructional units leads to demonstrable gains in student mastery of a number of science topics in comparison to more traditional approaches. In physics, these subjects include Newtonian mechanics (Wells, Hestenes, and Swackhamer, 1995; White, 1993); thermodynamics (Songer and Linn, 1991); electricity (Shaffer and McDermott, 1992); optics (Bell and Linn, 2000; Reiner, Pea, and Shulman, 1995); and matter (Lehrer, Schauble, Strom, and Pligge, 2001; Smith, Maclin, Grosslight, and Davis, 1997; Snir, Smith, and Raz, 2003). Integrated instructional units in biology have enhanced student mastery of genetics (Hickey, Kindfield, Horwitz, and Christie, 2003) and natural selection (Reiser et al., 2001). A chemistry unit has led to gains in student understanding of stoichiometry (Lynch, 2004). Many, but not all, of these instructional units combine computer-based simulations of the phenomena under study with direct interactions with these phenomena. The role of technology in providing laboratory experiences is described later in this chapter.

Developing Scientific Reasoning

While philosophers of science now agree that there is no single scientific method, they do agree that a number of reasoning skills are critical to research across the natural sciences. These reasoning skills include identifying questions and concepts that guide scientific investigations, designing and conducting scientific investigations, developing and revising scientific explanations and models, recognizing and analyzing alternative explanations and models, and making and defending a scientific argument. It is not necessarily the case that these skills are sequenced in a particular way or used in every scientific investigation. Instead, they are representative of the abilities that both scientists and students need to investigate the material world and make meaning out of those investigations. Research on children’s and adults’ scientific reasoning (see the review by Zimmerman, 2000) suggests that effective experimentation is difficult for most people and not learned without instructional support.

Early research on the development of investigative skills suggested that students could learn aspects of scientific reasoning through typical laboratory instruction in college-level physics (Reif and St. John, 1979, cited in Hofstein and Lunetta, 1982) and in high school and college biology (Raghubir, 1979; Wheatley, 1975, cited in Hofstein and Lunetta, 1982).

More recent research, however, suggests that high school and college science teachers often emphasize laboratory procedures, leaving little time for discussion of how to plan an investigation or interpret its results (Tobin, 1987; see Chapter 4 ). Taken as a whole, the evidence indicates that typical laboratory work promotes only a few aspects of the full process of scientific reasoning—making observations and organizing, communicating, and interpreting data gathered from these observations. Typical laboratory experiences appear to have little effect on more complex aspects of scientific reasoning, such as the capacity to formulate research questions, design experiments, draw conclusions from observational data, and make inferences (Klopfer, 1990, cited in White, 1996).

Research developing from studies of integrated instructional units indicates that laboratory experiences can play an important role in developing all aspects of scientific reasoning, including the more complex aspects, if the laboratory experiences are integrated with small group discussion, lectures, and other forms of science instruction. With carefully designed instruction that incorporates opportunities to conduct investigations and reflect on the results, students as young as 4th and 5th grade can develop sophisticated scientific thinking (Lehrer and Schauble, 2004; Metz, 2004). Kuhn and colleagues have shown that 5th graders can learn to experiment effectively, albeit in carefully controlled domains and with extended supervised practice (Kuhn, Schauble, and Garcia-Mila, 1992). Explicit instruction on the purposes of experiments appears necessary to help 6th grade students design them well (Schauble, Giaser, Duschl, Schulze, and John, 1995).These studies suggest that laboratory experiences must be carefully designed to support the development of scientific reasoning.

Given the difficulty most students have with reasoning scientifically, a number of instructional units have focused on this goal. Evidence from several studies indicates that, with the appropriate scaffolding provided in these units, students can successfully reason scientifically. They can learn to design experiments (Schauble et al., 1995; White and Frederiksen, 1998), make predictions (Friedler, Nachmias, and Linn, 1990), and interpret and explain data (Bell and Linn, 2000; Coleman, 1998; Hatano and Inagaki, 1991; Meyer and Woodruff, 1997; Millar, 1998; Rosebery, Warren, and Conant, 1992; Sandoval and Millwood, 2005). Engagement with these instructional units has been shown to improve students’ abilities to recognize discrepancies between predicted and observed outcomes (Friedler et al., 1990) and to design good experiments (Dunbar, 1993; Kuhn et al., 1992; Schauble et al., 1995; Schauble, Klopfer, and Raghavan, 1991).

Integrated instructional units seem especially beneficial in developing scientific reasoning skills among lower ability students (White and Frederiksen, 1998).

Recently, research has focused on an important element of scientific reasoning—the ability to construct scientific arguments. Developing, revising, and communicating scientific arguments is now recognized as a core scientific practice (Driver, Newton, and Osborne, 2000; Duschl and Osborne, 2002). Laboratory experiences play a key role in instructional units designed to enhance students’ argumentation abilities, because they provide both the impetus and the data for constructing scientific arguments. Such efforts have taken many forms. For example, researchers working with young Haitian-speaking students in Boston used the students’ own interests to develop scientific investigations. Students designed an investigation to determine which school drinking fountain had the best-tasting water. The students designed data collection protocols, collected and analyzed their data, and then argued about their findings (Rosebery et al., 1992). The Knowledge Integration Environment project asked middle school students to examine a common set of evidence to debate competing hypotheses about light propagation. Overall, most students learned the scientific concept (that light goes on forever), although those who made better arguments learned more than their peers (Bell and Linn, 2000). These and other examples (e.g., Sandoval and Millwood, 2005) show that students in middle and high school can learn to argue scientifically, by learning to coordinate theoretical claims with evidence taken from their laboratory investigations.

Developing Practical Skills

Science educators and researchers have long claimed that learning practical laboratory skills is one of the important goals for laboratory experiences and that such skills may be attainable only through such experiences (White, 1996; Woolnough, 1983). However, development of practical skills has been measured in research less frequently than mastery of subject matter or scientific reasoning. Such practical outcomes deserve more attention, especially for laboratory experiences that are a critical part of vocational or technical training in some high school programs. When a primary goal of a program or course is to train students for jobs in laboratory settings, they must have the opportunity to learn to use and read sophisticated instruments and carry out standardized experimental procedures. The critical questions about acquiring these skills through laboratory experiences may not be whether laboratory experiences help students learn them, but how the experiences can be constructed so as to be most effective in teaching such skills.

Some research indicates that typical laboratory experiences specifically focused on learning practical skills can help students progress toward other goals. For example, one study found that students were often deficient in the simple skills needed to successfully carry out typical laboratory activities, such as using instruments to make measurements and collect accurate data (Bryce and Robertson, 1985). Other studies indicate that helping students to develop relevant instrumentation skills in controlled “prelab” activities can reduce the probability that important measurements in a laboratory experience will be compromised due to students’ lack of expertise with the apparatus (Beasley, 1985; Singer, 1977). This research suggests that development of practical skills may increase the probability that students will achieve the intended results in laboratory experiences. Achieving the intended results of a laboratory activity is a necessary, though not sufficient, step toward effectiveness in helping students attain laboratory learning goals.

Some research on typical laboratory experiences indicates that girls handle laboratory equipment less frequently than boys, and that this tendency is associated with less interest in science and less self-confidence in science ability among girls (Jovanovic and King, 1998). It is possible that helping girls to develop instrumentation skills may help them to participate more actively and enhance their interest in learning science.

Studies of integrated instructional units have not examined the extent to which engagement with these units may enhance practical skills in using laboratory materials and equipment. This reflects an instructional emphasis on helping students to learn scientific ideas with real understanding and on developing their skills at investigating scientific phenomena, rather than on particular laboratory techniques, such as taking accurate measurements or manipulating equipment. There is no evidence to suggest that students do not learn practical skills through integrated instructional units, but to date researchers have not assessed such practical skills.

Understanding the Nature of Science

Throughout the past 50 years, studies of students’ epistemological beliefs about science consistently show that most of them have naïve views about the nature of scientific knowledge and how such knowledge is constructed and evaluated by scientists over time (Driver, Leach, Millar, and Scott, 1996; Lederman, 1992). The general public understanding of science is similarly inaccurate. Firsthand experience with science is often seen as a key way to advance students’ understanding of and appreciation for the conventions of science. Laboratory experiences are considered the primary mecha-

nism for providing firsthand experience and are therefore assumed to improve students’ understanding of the nature of science.

Research on student understanding of the nature of science provides little evidence of improvement with science instruction (Lederman, 1992; Driver et al., 1996). Although much of this research historically did not examine details of students’ laboratory experiences, it often included very large samples of science students and thus arguably captured typical laboratory experiences (research from the late 1950s through the 1980s is reviewed by Lederman, 1992). There appear to be developmental trends in students’ understanding of the relations between experimentation and theory-building. Younger students tend to believe that experiments yield direct answers to questions; during middle and high school, students shift to a vague notion of experiments being tests of ideas. Only a small number of students appear to leave high school with a notion of science as model-building and experimentation, in an ongoing process of testing and revision (Driver et al., 1996; Carey and Smith, 1993; Smith et al., 2000). The conclusion that most experts draw from these results is that the isolated nature and rote procedural focus of typical laboratory experiences inhibits students from developing robust conceptions of the nature of science. Consequently, some have argued that the nature of science must be an explicit target of instruction (Khishfe and Abd-El-Khalick, 2002; Lederman, Abd-El-Khalick, Bell, and Schwartz, 2002).

As discussed above, there is reasonable evidence that integrated instructional units help students to learn processes of scientific inquiry. However, such instructional units do not appear, on their own, to help students develop robust conceptions of the nature of science. One large-scale study of a widely available inquiry-oriented curriculum, in which integrated instructional units were an explicit feature, showed no significant change in students’ ideas about the nature of science after a year’s instruction (Meichtry, 1993). Students engaged in the BGuILE science instructional unit showed no gains in understanding the nature of science from their participation, and they seemed not even to see their experience in the unit as necessarily related to professional science (Sandoval and Morrison, 2003). These findings and others have led to the suggestion that the nature of science must be an explicit target of instruction (Lederman et al., 2002).

There is evidence from the ThinkerTools science instructional unit that by engaging in reflective self-assessment on their own scientific investiga-

tions, students gained a more sophisticated understanding of the nature of science than matched control classes who used the curriculum without the ongoing monitoring and evaluation of their own and others’ research (White and Frederiksen, 1998). Students who engaged in the reflective assessment process “acquire knowledge of the forms that scientific laws, models, and theories can take, and of how the development of scientific theories is related to empirical evidence” (White and Frederiksen, 1998, p. 92). Students who participated in the laboratory experiences and other learning activities in this unit using the reflective assessment process were less likely to “view scientific theories as immutable and never subject to revision” (White and Frederiksen, 1998, p. 72). Instead, they saw science as meaningful and explicable. The ThinkerTools findings support the idea that attention to nature of science issues should be an explicit part of integrated instructional units, although even with such attention it remains difficult to change students’ ideas (Khishfe and Abd-el-Khalick, 2002).

A survey of several integrated instructional units found that they seem to bridge the “language gap” between science in school and scientific practice (Duschl, 2004). The units give students “extended opportunities to explore the relationship between evidence and explanation,” helping them not only to develop new knowledge (mastery of subject matter), but also to evaluate claims of scientific knowledge, reflecting a deeper understanding of the nature of science (Duschl, 2004). The available research leaves open the question of whether or not these experiences help students to develop an explicit, reflective conceptual framework about the nature of science.

Cultivating Interest in Science and Interest in Learning Science

Studies of the effect of typical laboratory experiences on student interest are much rarer than those focusing on student achievement or other cognitive outcomes (Hofstein and Lunetta, 2004; White, 1996). The number of studies that address interest, attitudes, and other affective outcomes has decreased over the past decade, as researchers have focused almost exclusively on cognitive outcomes (Hofstein and Lunetta, 2004). Among the few studies available, the evidence is mixed. Some studies indicate that laboratory experiences lead to more positive attitudes (Renner, Abraham, and Birnie, 1985; Denny and Chennell, 1986). Other studies show no relation between laboratory experiences and affect (Ato and Wilkinson, 1986; Freedman, 2002), and still others report laboratory experiences turned students away from science (Holden, 1990; Shepardson and Pizzini, 1993).

There are, however, two apparent weaknesses in studies of interest and attitude (Hofstein and Lunetta, 1982). One is that researchers often do not carefully define interest and how it should be measured. Consequently, it is unclear if students simply reported liking laboratory activities more than other classroom activities, or if laboratory activities engendered more interest in science as a field, or in taking science courses, or something else. Similarly, studies may report increased positive attitudes toward science from students’ participation in laboratory experiences, without clear description of what attitudes were measured, how large the changes were, or whether changes persisted over time.

Student Perceptions of Typical Laboratory Experiences

Students’ perceptions of laboratory experiences may affect their interest and engagement in science, and some studies have examined those perceptions. Researchers have found that students often do not have clear ideas about the general or specific purposes of their work in typical science laboratory activities (Chang and Lederman, 1994) and that their understanding of the goals of lessons frequently do not match their teachers’ goals for the same lessons (Hodson, 1993; Osborne and Freyberg, 1985; Wilkenson and Ward, 1997). When students do not understand the goals of experiments or laboratory investigations, negative consequences for learning occur (Schauble et al., 1995). In fact, students often do not make important connections between the purpose of a typical laboratory investigation and the design of the experiments. They do not connect the experiment with what they have done earlier, and they do not note the discrepancies among their own concepts, the concepts of their peers, and those of the science community (Champagne et al., 1985; Eylon and Linn, 1988; Tasker, 1981). As White (1998) notes, “to many students, a ‘lab’ means manipulating equipment but not manipulating ideas.” Thus, in considering how laboratory experiences may contribute to students’ interest in science and to other learning goals, their perceptions of those experiences must be considered.

A series of studies using the Science Laboratory Environment Inventory (SLEI) has demonstrated links between students’ perceptions of laboratory experiences and student outcomes (Fraser, McRobbie, and Giddings, 1993; Fraser, Giddings, and McRobbie, 1995; Henderson, Fisher, and Fraser, 2000; Wong and Fraser, 1995). The SLEI, which has been validated cross-nationally, measures five dimensions of the laboratory environment: student cohesiveness, open-endedness, integration, rule clarity, and material environment (see Table 3-1 for a description of each scale). Using the SLEI, researchers have studied students’ perceptions of chemistry and biology laboratories in several countries, including the United States. All five dimensions appear to be positively related with student attitudes, although the

TABLE 3-1 Descriptive Information for the Science Laboratory Environment Inventory

relation of open-endedness with attitudes seems to vary with student population. In some populations, there is a negative relation to attitudes (Fraser et al., 1995) and to some cognitive outcomes (Henderson et al., 2000).

Research using the SLEI indicates that positive student attitudes are particularly strongly associated with cohesiveness (the extent to which students know, help, and are supportive of one another) and integration (the extent to which laboratory activities are integrated with nonlaboratory and theory classes) (Fraser et al.,1995; Wong and Fraser, 1995). Integration also shows a positive relation to students’ cognitive outcomes (Henderson et al., 2000; McRobbie and Fraser, 1993).

Students’ interest and attitudes have been measured less often than other goals of laboratory experiences in studies of integrated instructional units. When evidence is available, it suggests that students who participate in these units show greater interest in and more positive attitudes toward science. For example, in a study of ThinkerTools, completion of projects was used as a measure of student interest. The rate of submitting completed projects was higher for students in the ThinkerTools curriculum than for those in traditional instruction. This was true for all grades and ability levels (White and

Frederiksen, 1998). This study also found that students’ ongoing evaluation of their own and other students’ thinking increased motivation and self-confidence in their individual ability: students who participated in this ongoing evaluation not only turned in their final project reports more frequently, but they were also less likely to turn in reports that were identical to their research partner’s.

Participation in the ThinkerTools instructional unit appears to change students’ attitudes toward learning science. After completing the integrated instructional unit, fewer students indicated that “being good at science” was a result of inherited traits, and fewer agreed with the statement, “In general, boys tend to be naturally better at science than girls.” In addition, more students indicated that they preferred taking an active role in learning science, rather than simply being told the correct answer by the teacher (White and Frederiksen, 1998).

Researchers measured students’ engagement and motivation to master the complex topic of conservation of matter as part of the study of CTA. Students who participated in the CTA curriculum had higher levels of basic engagement (active participation in activities) and were more likely to focus on learning from the activities than students in the control group (Lynch et al., in press). This positive effect on engagement was especially strong among low-income students. The researchers speculate, “perhaps as a result of these changes in engagement and motivation, they learned more than if they had received the standard curriculum” (Lynch et al., in press).

Students who participated in CLP during middle school, when surveyed years later as high school seniors, were more likely to report that science is relevant to their lives than students who did not participate (Linn and Hsi, 2000). Further research is needed to illuminate which aspects of this instructional unit contribute to increased interest.

Developing Teamwork Abilities

Teamwork and collaboration appear in research on typical laboratory experiences in two ways. First, working in groups is seen as a way to enhance student learning, usually with reference to literature on cooperative learning or to the importance of providing opportunities for students to discuss their ideas. Second and more recently, attention has focused on the ability to work in groups as an outcome itself, with laboratory experiences seen as an ideal opportunity to develop these skills. The focus on teamwork as an outcome is usually linked to arguments that this is an essential skill for workers in the 21st century (Partnership for 21st Century Skills, 2003).

There is considerable evidence that collaborative work can help students learn, especially if students with high ability work with students with low ability (Webb and Palincsar, 1996). Collaboration seems especially helpful to lower ability students, but only when they work with more knowledgeable peers (Webb, Nemer, Chizhik, and Sugrue, 1998). Building on this research, integrated instructional units engage students in small-group collaboration as a way to encourage them to connect what they know (either from their own experiences or from prior instruction) to their laboratory experiences. Often, individual students disagree about prospective answers to the questions under investigation or the best way to approach them, and collaboration encourages students to articulate and explain their reasoning. A number of studies suggest that such collaborative investigation is effective in helping students to learn targeted scientific concepts (Coleman, 1998; Roschelle, 1992).

Extant research lacks specific assessment of the kinds of collaborative skills that might be learned by individual students through laboratory work. The assumption appears to be that if students collaborate and such collaborations are effective in supporting their conceptual learning, then they are probably learning collaborative skills, too.

Overall Effectiveness of Laboratory Experiences

The two bodies of research—the earlier research on typical laboratory experiences and the emerging research on integrated instructional units—yield different findings about the effectiveness of laboratory experiences in advancing the goals identified by the committee. In general, the nascent body of research on integrated instructional units offers the promise that laboratory experiences embedded in a larger stream of science instruction can be more effective in advancing these goals than are typical laboratory experiences (see Table 3-2 ).

Research on the effectiveness of typical laboratory experiences is methodologically weak and fragmented. The limited evidence available suggests that typical laboratory experiences, by themselves, are neither better nor worse than other methods of science instruction for helping students master science subject matter. However, more recent research indicates that integrated instructional units enhance students’ mastery of subject matter. Studies have demonstrated increases in student mastery of complex topics in physics, chemistry, and biology.

Typical laboratory experiences appear, based on the limited research available, to support some aspects of scientific reasoning; however, typical laboratory experiences alone are not sufficient for promoting more sophisticated scientific reasoning abilities, such as asking appropriate questions,

TABLE 3-2 Attainment of Educational Goals in Typical Laboratory Experiences and Integrated Instructional Units

designing experiments, and drawing inferences. Research on integrated instructional units provides evidence that the laboratory experiences and other forms of instruction they include promote development of several aspects of scientific reasoning, including the ability to ask appropriate questions, design experiments, and draw inferences.

The evidence indicates that typical laboratory experiences do little to increase students’ understanding of the nature of science. In contrast, some studies find that participating in integrated instructional units that are designed specifically with this goal in mind enhances understanding of the nature of science.

The available research suggests that typical laboratory experiences can play a role in enhancing students’ interest in science and in learning science. There is evidence that engagement with the laboratory experiences and other learning activities included in integrated instructional units enhances students’ interest in science and motivation to learn science.

In sum, the evolving research on integrated instructional units provides evidence of increases in students’ understanding of subject matter, development of scientific reasoning, and interest in science, compared with students who received more traditional forms of science instruction. Studies conducted to date also suggest that the units are effective in helping diverse groups of students attain these three learning goals. In contrast, the earlier research on typical laboratory experiences indicates that such typical laboratory experiences are neither better nor worse than other forms of science instruction in supporting student mastery of subject matter. Typical laboratory experiences appear to aid in development of only some aspects of scientific reasoning, and they appear to play a role in enhancing students’ interest in science and in learning science.

Due to a lack of available studies, the committee was unable to draw conclusions about the extent to which either typical laboratory experiences or laboratory experiences incorporated into integrated instructional units might advance the other goals identified at the beginning of this chapter—enhancing understanding of the complexity and ambiguity of empirical work, acquiring practical skills, and developing teamwork skills.

PRINCIPLES FOR DESIGN OF EFFECTIVE LABORATORY EXPERIENCES

The three bodies of research we have discussed—research on how people learn, research on typical laboratory experiences, and developing research on how students learn in integrated instructional units—yield information that promises to inform the design of more effective laboratory experiences.

The committee considers the emerging evidence sufficient to suggest four general principles that can help laboratory experiences achieve the goals outlined above. It must be stressed, however, that research to date has not described in much detail how these principles can be implemented nor how each principle might relate to each of the educational goals of laboratory experiences.

Clearly Communicated Purposes

Effective laboratory experiences have clear learning goals that guide the design of the experience. Ideally these goals are clearly communicated to students. Without a clear understanding of the purposes of a laboratory activity, students seem not to get much from it. Conversely, when the purposes of a laboratory activity are clearly communicated by teachers to students, then students seem capable of understanding them and carrying them out. There seems to be no compelling evidence that particular purposes are more understandable to students than others.

Sequenced into the Flow of Instruction

Effective laboratory experiences are thoughtfully sequenced into the flow of classroom science instruction. That is, they are explicitly linked to what has come before and what will come after. A common theme in reviews of laboratory practice in the United States is that laboratory experiences are presented to students as isolated events, unconnected with other aspects of classroom work. In contrast, integrated instructional units embed laboratory experiences with other activities that build on the laboratory experiences and push students to reflect on and better understand these experiences. The way a particular laboratory experience is integrated into a flow of activities should be guided by the goals of the overall sequence of instruction and of the particular laboratory experience.

Integrated Learning of Science Concepts and Processes

Research in the learning sciences (National Research Council, 1999, 2001) strongly implies that conceptual understanding, scientific reasoning, and practical skills are three capabilities that are not mutually exclusive. An educational program that partitions the teaching and learning of content from the teaching and learning of process is likely to be ineffective in helping students develop scientific reasoning skills and an understanding of science as a way of knowing. The research on integrated instructional units, all of which intertwine exploration of content with process through laboratory experiences, suggests that integration of content and process promotes attainment of several goals identified by the committee.

Ongoing Discussion and Reflection

Laboratory experiences are more likely to be effective when they focus students more on discussing the activities they have done during their laboratory experiences and reflecting on the meaning they can make from them, than on the laboratory activities themselves. Crucially, the focus of laboratory experiences and the surrounding instructional activities should not simply be on confirming presented ideas, but on developing explanations to make sense of patterns of data. Teaching strategies that encourage students to articulate their hypotheses about phenomena prior to experimentation and to then reflect on their ideas after experimentation are demonstrably more successful at supporting student attainment of the goals of mastery of subject matter, developing scientific reasoning, and increasing interest in science and science learning. At the same time, opportunities for ongoing discussion and reflection could potentially support students in developing teamwork skills.

COMPUTER TECHNOLOGIES AND LABORATORY EXPERIENCES

From scales to microscopes, technology in many forms plays an integral role in most high school laboratory experiences. Over the past two decades, personal computers have enabled the development of software specifically designed to help students learn science, and the Internet is an increasingly used tool for science learning and for science itself. This section examines the role that computer technologies now and may someday play in science learning in relation to laboratory experiences. Certain uses of computer technology can be seen as laboratory experiences themselves, according to the committee’s definition, to the extent that they allow students to interact with data drawn directly from the world. Other uses, less clearly laboratory experiences in themselves, provide certain features that aid science learning.

Computer Technologies Designed to Support Learning

Researchers and science educators have developed a number of software programs to support science learning in various ways. In this section, we summarize what we see as the main ways in which computer software can support science learning through providing or augmenting laboratory experiences.

Scaffolded Representations of Natural Phenomena

Perhaps the most common form of science education software are programs that enable students to interact with carefully crafted models of natural phenomena that are difficult to see and understand in the real world and have proven historically difficult for students to understand. Such programs are able to show conceptual interrelationships and connections between theoretical constructs and natural phenomena through the use of multiple, linked representations. For example, velocity can be linked to acceleration and position in ways that make the interrelationships understandable to students (Roschelle, Kaput, and Stroup, 2000). Chromosome genetics can be linked to changes in pedigrees and populations (Horowitz, 1996). Molecular chemical representations can be linked to chemical equations (Kozma, 2003).

In the ThinkerTools integrated instructional unit, abstracted representations of force and motion are provided for students to help them “see” such ideas as force, acceleration, and velocity in two dimensions (White, 1993; White and Frederiksen, 1998). Objects in the ThinkerTools microworld are represented as simple, uniformly sized “dots” to avoid students becoming confused about the idea of center of mass. Students use the microworld to solve various problems of motion in one or two dimensions, using the com-

puter keyboard to apply forces to dots to move them along specified paths. Part of the key to the software’s guidance is that it provides representations of forces and accelerations in which students can see change in response to their actions. A “dot trace,” for example, shows students how applying more force affects an object’s acceleration in a predictable way. A “vector cross” represents the individual components of forces applied in two dimensions in a way that helps students to link those forces to an object’s motion.

ThinkerTools is but one example of this type of interactive, representational software. Others have been developed to help students reason about motion (Roschelle, 1992), electricity (Gutwill, Fredericksen, and White, 1999), heat and temperature (Linn, Bell, and Hsi, 1998), genetics (Horwitz and Christie, 2000), and chemical reactions (Kozma, 2003), among others. These programs differ substantially from one another in how they represent their target phenomena, as there are substantial differences in the topics themselves and in the problems that students are known to have in understanding them. They share, however, a common approach to solving a similar set of problems—how to represent natural phenomena that are otherwise invisible in ways that help students make their own thinking explicit and guide them to normative scientific understanding.

When used as a supplement to hands-on laboratory experiences within integrated instructional units, these representations can support students’ conceptual change (e.g., Linn et al., 1998; White and Frederiksen, 1998). For example, students working through the ThinkerTools curriculum always experiment with objects in the real world before they work with the computer tools. The goals of the laboratory experiences are to provide some experience with the phenomena under study and some initial ideas that can then be explored on the computer.

Structured Simulations of Inaccessible Phenomena

Various types of simulations of phenomena represent another form of technology for science learning. These simulations allow students to explore and observe phenomena that are too expensive, infeasible, or even dangerous to interact with directly. Strictly speaking, a computer simulation is a program that simulates a particular phenomenon by running a computational model whose behavior can sometimes be changed by modifying input parameters to the model. For example, the GenScope program provides a set of linked representations of genetics and genetics phenomena that would otherwise be unavailable for study to most students (Horowitz and Christie, 2000). The software represents alleles, chromosomes, family pedigrees, and the like and links representations across levels in ways that enable students to trace inherited traits to specific genetic differences. The software uses an underlying Mendelian model of genetic inheritance to gov-

ern its behavior. As with the representations described above, embedding the use of the software in a carefully thought out curriculum sequence is crucial to supporting student learning (Hickey et al., 2000).

Another example in biology is the BGuILE project (Reiser et al., 2001). The investigators created a series of structured simulations allowing students to investigate problems of evolution by natural selection. In the Galapagos finch environment, for example, students can examine a carefully selected set of data from the island of Daphne Major to explain a historical case of natural selection. The BGuILE software does not, strictly speaking, consist of simulations because it does not “run” a model; from a student’s perspective, it simulates either Daphne Major or laboratory experiments on tuberculosis bacteria. Studies show that students can learn from the BGuILE environments when these environments are embedded in a well-organized curriculum (Sandoval and Reiser, 2004). They also show that successful implementation of such technology-supported curricula relies heavily on teachers (Tabak, 2004).

Structured Interactions with Complex Phenomena and Ideas

The examples discussed here share a crucial feature. The representations built into the software and the interface tools provided for learners are intended to help them learn in very specific ways. There are a great number of such tools that have been developed over the last quarter of a century. Many of them have been shown to produce impressive learning gains for students at the secondary level. Besides the ones mentioned, other tools are designed to structure specific scientific reasoning skills, such as prediction (Friedler et al., 1990) and the coordination of claims with evidence (Bell and Linn, 2000; Sandoval, 2003). Most of these efforts integrate students’ work on the computer with more direct laboratory experiences. Rather than thinking of these representations and simulations as a way to replace laboratory experiences, the most successful instructional sequences integrate them with a series of empirical laboratory investigations. These sequences of science instruction focus students’ attention on developing a shared interpretation of both the representations and the real laboratory experiences in small groups (Bell, 2005).

Computer Technologies Designed to Support Science

Advances in computer technologies have had a tremendous impact on how science is done and on what scientists can study. These changes are vast, and summarizing them is well beyond the scope of the committee’s charge. We found, however, that some innovations in scientific practice, especially uses of the Internet, are beginning to be applied to secondary

science education. With respect to future laboratory experiences, perhaps the most significant advance in many scientific fields is the aggregation of large, varied data sets into Internet-accessible databases. These databases are most commonly built for specific scientific communities, but some researchers are creating and studying new, learner-centered interfaces to allow access by teachers and schools. These research projects build on instructional design principles illuminated by the integrated instructional units discussed above.

One example is the Center for Embedded Networked Sensing (CENS), a National Science Foundation Science and Technology Center investigating the development and deployment of large-scale sensor networks embedded in physical environments. CENS is currently working on ecosystem monitoring, seismology, contaminant flow transport, and marine microbiology. As sensor networks come on line, making data available, science educators at the center are developing middle school curricula that include web-based tools to enable students to explore the same data sets that the professional scientists are exploring (Pea, Mills, and Takeuchi, 2004).

The interfaces professional scientists use to access such databases tend to be too inflexible and technical for students to use successfully (Bell, 2005). Bounding the space of possible data under consideration, supporting appropriate considerations of theory, and promoting understanding of the norms used in the visualization can help support students in developing a shared understanding of the data. With such support, students can develop both conceptual understanding and understanding of the data analysis process. Focusing students on causal explanation and argumentation based on the data analysis process can help them move from a descriptive, phenomenological view of science to one that considers theoretical issues of cause (Bell, 2005).

Further research and evaluation of the educational benefit of student interaction with large scientific databases are absolutely necessary. Still, the development of such efforts will certainly expand over time, and, as they change notions of what it means to conduct scientific experiments, they are also likely to change what it means to conduct a school laboratory.

The committee identified a number of science learning goals that have been attributed to laboratory experiences. Our review of the evidence on attainment of these goals revealed a recent shift in research, reflecting some movement in laboratory instruction. Historically, laboratory experiences have been disconnected from the flow of classroom science lessons. We refer to these separate laboratory experiences as typical laboratory experiences. Reflecting this separation, researchers often engaged students in one or two

experiments or other science activities and then conducted assessments to determine whether their understanding of the science concept underlying the activity had increased. Some studies compared the outcomes of these separate laboratory experiences with the outcomes of other forms of science instruction, such as lectures or discussions.

Over the past 10 years, researchers studying laboratory education have shifted their focus. Drawing on principles of learning derived from the cognitive sciences, they have asked how to sequence science instruction, including laboratory experiences, in order to support students’ science learning. We refer to these instructional sequences as “integrated instructional units.” Integrated instructional units connect laboratory experiences with other types of science learning activities, including lectures, reading, and discussion. Students are engaged in framing research questions, making observations, designing and executing experiments, gathering and analyzing data, and constructing scientific arguments and explanations.

The two bodies of research on typical laboratory experiences and integrated instructional units, including laboratory experiences, yield different findings about the effectiveness of laboratory experiences in advancing the science learning goals identified by the committee. The earlier research on typical laboratory experiences is weak and fragmented, making it difficult to draw precise conclusions. The weight of the evidence from research focused on the goals of developing scientific reasoning and enhancing student interest in science showed slight improvements in both after students participated in typical laboratory experiences. Research focused on the goal of student mastery of subject matter indicates that typical laboratory experiences are no more or less effective than other forms of science instruction (such as reading, lectures, or discussion).

Studies conducted to date on integrated instructional units indicate that the laboratory experiences, together with the other forms of instruction included in these units, show greater effectiveness for these same three goals (compared with students who received more traditional forms of science instruction): improving students’ mastery of subject matter, increasing development of scientific reasoning, and enhancing interest in science. Integrated instructional units also appear to be effective in helping diverse groups of students progress toward these three learning goals . A major limitation of the research on integrated instructional units, however, is that most of the units have been used in small numbers of science classrooms. Only a few studies have addressed the challenge of implementing—and studying the effectiveness of—integrated instructional units on a wide scale.

Due to a lack of available studies, the committee was unable to draw conclusions about the extent to which either typical laboratory experiences or integrated instructional units might advance the other goals identified at the beginning of this chapter—enhancing understanding of the complexity

and ambiguity of empirical work, acquiring practical skills, and developing teamwork skills. Further research is needed to clarify how laboratory experiences might be designed to promote attainment of these goals.

The committee considers the evidence sufficient to identify four general principles that can help laboratory experiences achieve the learning goals we have outlined. Laboratory experiences are more likely to achieve their intended learning goals if (1) they are designed with clear learning outcomes in mind, (2) they are thoughtfully sequenced into the flow of classroom science instruction, (3) they are designed to integrate learning of science content with learning about the processes of science, and (4) they incorporate ongoing student reflection and discussion.

Computer software and the Internet have enabled development of several tools that can support students’ science learning, including representations of complex phenomena, simulations, and student interaction with large scientific databases. Representations and simulations are most successful in supporting student learning when they are integrated in an instructional sequence that also includes laboratory experiences. Researchers are currently developing tools to support student interaction with—and learning from—large scientific databases.

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Laboratory experiences as a part of most U.S. high school science curricula have been taken for granted for decades, but they have rarely been carefully examined. What do they contribute to science learning? What can they contribute to science learning? What is the current status of labs in our nation�s high schools as a context for learning science? This book looks at a range of questions about how laboratory experiences fit into U.S. high schools:

• What is effective laboratory teaching?
• What does research tell us about learning in high school science labs?
• How should student learning in laboratory experiences be assessed?
• Do all student have access to laboratory experiences?
• What changes need to be made to improve laboratory experiences for high school students?
• How can school organization contribute to effective laboratory teaching?

With increased attention to the U.S. education system and student outcomes, no part of the high school curriculum should escape scrutiny. This timely book investigates factors that influence a high school laboratory experience, looking closely at what currently takes place and what the goals of those experiences are and should be. Science educators, school administrators, policy makers, and parents will all benefit from a better understanding of the need for laboratory experiences to be an integral part of the science curriculum—and how that can be accomplished.

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Writing Essays for Exams

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What is a well written answer to an essay question?

Well Focused

Be sure to answer the question completely, that is, answer all parts of the question. Avoid "padding." A lot of rambling and ranting is a sure sign that the writer doesn't really know what the right answer is and hopes that somehow, something in that overgrown jungle of words was the correct answer.

Well Organized

Don't write in a haphazard "think-as-you-go" manner. Do some planning and be sure that what you write has a clearly marked introduction which both states the point(s) you are going to make and also, if possible, how you are going to proceed. In addition, the essay should have a clearly indicated conclusion which summarizes the material covered and emphasizes your thesis or main point.

Well Supported

Do not just assert something is true, prove it. What facts, figures, examples, tests, etc. prove your point? In many cases, the difference between an A and a B as a grade is due to the effective use of supporting evidence.

Well Packaged

People who do not use conventions of language are thought of by their readers as less competent and less educated. If you need help with these or other writing skills, come to the Writing Lab

How do you write an effective essay exam?

• Read through all the questions carefully.
• Budget your time and decide which question(s) you will answer first.
• Underline the key word(s) which tell you what to do for each question.
• Choose an organizational pattern appropriate for each key word and plan your answers on scratch paper or in the margins.
• Write your answers as quickly and as legibly as you can; do not take the time to recopy.
• Begin each answer with one or two sentence thesis which summarizes your answer. If possible, phrase the statement so that it rephrases the question's essential terms into a statement (which therefore directly answers the essay question).
• Support your thesis with specific references to the material you have studied.
• Proofread your answer and correct errors in spelling and mechanics.

Specific organizational patterns and "key words"

Most essay questions will have one or more "key words" that indicate which organizational pattern you should use in your answer. The six most common organizational patterns for essay exams are definition, analysis, cause and effect, comparison/contrast, process analysis, and thesis-support.

Typical questions

• "Define X."
• "What is an X?"
• "Choose N terms from the following list and define them."

Q: "What is a fanzine?"

A: A fanzine is a magazine written, mimeographed, and distributed by and for science fiction or comic strip enthusiasts.

Avoid constructions such as "An encounter group is where ..." and "General semantics is when ... ."

• State the term to be defined.
• State the class of objects or concepts to which the term belongs.
• Differentiate the term from other members of the class by listing the term's distinguishing characteristics.

Tools you can use

• Details which describe the term
• Examples and incidents
• Comparisons to familiar terms
• Negation to state what the term is not
• Classification (i.e., break it down into parts)
• Examination of origins or causes
• Examination of results, effects, or uses

Analysis involves breaking something down into its components and discovering the parts that make up the whole.

• "Analyze X."
• "What are the components of X?"
• "What are the five different kinds of X?"
• "Discuss the different types of X."

Q: "Discuss the different services a junior college offers a community."

A: Thesis: A junior college offers the community at least three main types of educational services: vocational education for young people, continuing education for older people, and personal development for all individuals.

Outline for supporting details and examples. For example, if you were answering the example question, an outline might include:

• Vocational education
• Continuing education
• Personal development

Write the essay, describing each part or component and making transitions between each of your descriptions. Some useful transition words include:

• first, second, third, etc.
• in addition

Conclude the essay by emphasizing how each part you have described makes up the whole you have been asked to analyze.

Cause and Effect

Cause and effect involves tracing probable or known effects of a certain cause or examining one or more effects and discussing the reasonable or known cause(s).

Typical questions:

• "What are the causes of X?"
• "What led to X?"
• "Why did X occur?"
• "Why does X happen?"
• "What would be the effects of X?"

Q: "Define recession and discuss the probable effects a recession would have on today's society."

A: Thesis: A recession, which is a nationwide lull in business activity, would be detrimental to society in the following ways: it would .......A......., it would .......B......., and it would .......C....... .

The rest of the answer would explain, in some detail, the three effects: A, B, and C.

Useful transition words:

• consequently
• for this reason
• as a result

Comparison-Contrast

• "How does X differ from Y?"
• "Compare X and Y."
• "What are the advantages and disadvantages of X and Y?"

Q: "Which would you rather own—a compact car or a full-sized car?"

A: Thesis: I would own a compact car rather than a full-sized car for the following reasons: .......A......., .......B......., .......C......., and .......D....... .

Two patterns of development:

• Full-sized car

Disadvantages

• Compact car

Useful transition words

• on the other hand
• unlike A, B ...
• in the same way
• while both A and B are ..., only B ..
• nevertheless
• on the contrary
• while A is ..., B is ...
• "Describe how X is accomplished."
• "List the steps involved in X."
• "Explain what happened in X."
• "What is the procedure involved in X?"

Process (sometimes called process analysis)

This involves giving directions or telling the reader how to do something. It may involve discussing some complex procedure as a series of discrete steps. The organization is almost always chronological.

Q: "According to Richard Bolles' What Color Is Your Parachute?, what is the best procedure for finding a job?"

A: In What Color Is Your Parachute?, Richard Bolles lists seven steps that all job-hunters should follow: .....A....., .....B....., .....C....., .....D....., .....E....., .....F....., and .....G..... .

The remainder of the answer should discuss each of these seven steps in some detail.

• following this
• after, afterwards, after this
• subsequently
• simultaneously, concurrently

Thesis and Support

• "Discuss X."
• "A noted authority has said X. Do you agree or disagree?"
• "Defend or refute X."
• "Do you think that X is valid? Defend your position."

Thesis and support involves stating a clearly worded opinion or interpretation and then defending it with all the data, examples, facts, and so on that you can draw from the material you have studied.

Q: "Despite criticism, television is useful because it aids in the socializing process of our children."

A: Television hinders rather than helps in the socializing process of our children because .......A......., .......B......., and .......C....... .

The rest of the answer is devoted to developing arguments A, B, and C.

• it follows that

A. Which of the following two answers is the better one? Why?

Question: Discuss the contribution of William Morris to book design, using as an example his edition of the works of Chaucer.

a. William Morris's Chaucer was his masterpiece. It shows his interest in the Middle Ages. The type is based on medieval manuscript writing, and the decoration around the edges of the pages is like that used in medieval books. The large initial letters are typical of medieval design. Those letters were printed from woodcuts, which was the medieval way of printing. The illustrations were by Burn-Jones, one of the best artists in England at the time. Morris was able to get the most competent people to help him because he was so famous as a poet and a designer (the Morris chair) and wallpaper and other decorative items for the home. He designed the furnishings for his own home, which was widely admired among the sort of people he associated with. In this way he started the arts and crafts movement.

b. Morris's contribution to book design was to approach the problem as an artist or fine craftsman, rather than a mere printer who reproduced texts. He wanted to raise the standards of printing, which had fallen to a low point, by showing that truly beautiful books could be produced. His Chaucer was designed as a unified work of art or high craft. Since Chaucer lived in the Middle Ages, Morris decided to design a new type based on medieval script and to imitate the format of a medieval manuscript. This involved elaborate letters and large initials at the beginnings of verses, as well as wide borders of intertwined vines with leaves, fruit, and flowers in strong colors. The effect was so unusual that the book caused great excitement and inspired other printers to design beautiful rather than purely utilitarian books.

From James M. McCrimmon, Writing with a Purpose , 7th ed. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1980), pp. 261-263.

B. How would you plan the structure of the answers to these essay exam questions?

1. Was the X Act a continuation of earlier government policies or did it represent a departure from prior philosophies?

2. What seems to be the source of aggression in human beings? What can be done to lower the level of aggression in our society?

3. Choose one character from Novel X and, with specific references to the work, show how he or she functions as an "existential hero."

4. Define briefly the systems approach to business management. Illustrate how this differs from the traditional approach.

5. What is the cosmological argument? Does it prove that God exists?

6. Civil War historian Andy Bellum once wrote, "Blahblahblah blahed a blahblah, but of course if blahblah blahblahblahed the blah, then blahblahs are not blah but blahblah." To what extent and in what ways is the statement true? How is it false?

For more information on writing exam essays for the GED, please visit our Engagement area and go to the Community Writing and Education Station (CWEST) resources.

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How To Write A Lab Report | Step-by-Step Guide & Examples

Published on May 20, 2021 by Pritha Bhandari . Revised on July 23, 2023.

A lab report conveys the aim, methods, results, and conclusions of a scientific experiment. The main purpose of a lab report is to demonstrate your understanding of the scientific method by performing and evaluating a hands-on lab experiment. This type of assignment is usually shorter than a research paper .

Lab reports are commonly used in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. This article focuses on how to structure and write a lab report.

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Table of contents

Structuring a lab report, introduction, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions about lab reports.

The sections of a lab report can vary between scientific fields and course requirements, but they usually contain the purpose, methods, and findings of a lab experiment .

Each section of a lab report has its own purpose.

• Title: expresses the topic of your study
• Abstract : summarizes your research aims, methods, results, and conclusions
• Introduction: establishes the context needed to understand the topic
• Method: describes the materials and procedures used in the experiment
• Results: reports all descriptive and inferential statistical analyses
• Discussion: interprets and evaluates results and identifies limitations
• Conclusion: sums up the main findings of your experiment
• References: list of all sources cited using a specific style (e.g. APA )
• Appendices : contains lengthy materials, procedures, tables or figures

Although most lab reports contain these sections, some sections can be omitted or combined with others. For example, some lab reports contain a brief section on research aims instead of an introduction, and a separate conclusion is not always required.

If you’re not sure, it’s best to check your lab report requirements with your instructor.

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Your title provides the first impression of your lab report – effective titles communicate the topic and/or the findings of your study in specific terms.

Create a title that directly conveys the main focus or purpose of your study. It doesn’t need to be creative or thought-provoking, but it should be informative.

• The effects of varying nitrogen levels on tomato plant height.
• Testing the universality of the McGurk effect.
• Comparing the viscosity of common liquids found in kitchens.

An abstract condenses a lab report into a brief overview of about 150–300 words. It should provide readers with a compact version of the research aims, the methods and materials used, the main results, and the final conclusion.

Think of it as a way of giving readers a preview of your full lab report. Write the abstract last, in the past tense, after you’ve drafted all the other sections of your report, so you’ll be able to succinctly summarize each section.

To write a lab report abstract, use these guiding questions:

• What is the wider context of your study?
• What research question were you trying to answer?
• How did you perform the experiment?
• What did your results show?
• How did you interpret your results?
• What is the importance of your findings?

Nitrogen is a necessary nutrient for high quality plants. Tomatoes, one of the most consumed fruits worldwide, rely on nitrogen for healthy leaves and stems to grow fruit. This experiment tested whether nitrogen levels affected tomato plant height in a controlled setting. It was expected that higher levels of nitrogen fertilizer would yield taller tomato plants.

Levels of nitrogen fertilizer were varied between three groups of tomato plants. The control group did not receive any nitrogen fertilizer, while one experimental group received low levels of nitrogen fertilizer, and a second experimental group received high levels of nitrogen fertilizer. All plants were grown from seeds, and heights were measured 50 days into the experiment.

The effects of nitrogen levels on plant height were tested between groups using an ANOVA. The plants with the highest level of nitrogen fertilizer were the tallest, while the plants with low levels of nitrogen exceeded the control group plants in height. In line with expectations and previous findings, the effects of nitrogen levels on plant height were statistically significant. This study strengthens the importance of nitrogen for tomato plants.

Your lab report introduction should set the scene for your experiment. One way to write your introduction is with a funnel (an inverted triangle) structure:

• Start with the broad, general research topic
• Narrow your topic down your specific study focus
• End with a clear research question

Begin by providing background information on your research topic and explaining why it’s important in a broad real-world or theoretical context. Describe relevant previous research on your topic and note how your study may confirm it or expand it, or fill a gap in the research field.

This lab experiment builds on previous research from Haque, Paul, and Sarker (2011), who demonstrated that tomato plant yield increased at higher levels of nitrogen. However, the present research focuses on plant height as a growth indicator and uses a lab-controlled setting instead.

Next, go into detail on the theoretical basis for your study and describe any directly relevant laws or equations that you’ll be using. State your main research aims and expectations by outlining your hypotheses .

Based on the importance of nitrogen for tomato plants, the primary hypothesis was that the plants with the high levels of nitrogen would grow the tallest. The secondary hypothesis was that plants with low levels of nitrogen would grow taller than plants with no nitrogen.

Your introduction doesn’t need to be long, but you may need to organize it into a few paragraphs or with subheadings such as “Research Context” or “Research Aims.”

A lab report Method section details the steps you took to gather and analyze data. Give enough detail so that others can follow or evaluate your procedures. Write this section in the past tense. If you need to include any long lists of procedural steps or materials, place them in the Appendices section but refer to them in the text here.

You should describe your experimental design, your subjects, materials, and specific procedures used for data collection and analysis.

Experimental design

Briefly note whether your experiment is a within-subjects  or between-subjects design, and describe how your sample units were assigned to conditions if relevant.

A between-subjects design with three groups of tomato plants was used. The control group did not receive any nitrogen fertilizer. The first experimental group received a low level of nitrogen fertilizer, while the second experimental group received a high level of nitrogen fertilizer.

Describe human subjects in terms of demographic characteristics, and animal or plant subjects in terms of genetic background. Note the total number of subjects as well as the number of subjects per condition or per group. You should also state how you recruited subjects for your study.

List the equipment or materials you used to gather data and state the model names for any specialized equipment.

List of materials

35 Tomato seeds

15 plant pots (15 cm tall)

Light lamps (50,000 lux)

Nitrogen fertilizer

Measuring tape

Describe your experimental settings and conditions in detail. You can provide labelled diagrams or images of the exact set-up necessary for experimental equipment. State how extraneous variables were controlled through restriction or by fixing them at a certain level (e.g., keeping the lab at room temperature).

Light levels were fixed throughout the experiment, and the plants were exposed to 12 hours of light a day. Temperature was restricted to between 23 and 25℃. The pH and carbon levels of the soil were also held constant throughout the experiment as these variables could influence plant height. The plants were grown in rooms free of insects or other pests, and they were spaced out adequately.

Your experimental procedure should describe the exact steps you took to gather data in chronological order. You’ll need to provide enough information so that someone else can replicate your procedure, but you should also be concise. Place detailed information in the appendices where appropriate.

In a lab experiment, you’ll often closely follow a lab manual to gather data. Some instructors will allow you to simply reference the manual and state whether you changed any steps based on practical considerations. Other instructors may want you to rewrite the lab manual procedures as complete sentences in coherent paragraphs, while noting any changes to the steps that you applied in practice.

If you’re performing extensive data analysis, be sure to state your planned analysis methods as well. This includes the types of tests you’ll perform and any programs or software you’ll use for calculations (if relevant).

First, tomato seeds were sown in wooden flats containing soil about 2 cm below the surface. Each seed was kept 3-5 cm apart. The flats were covered to keep the soil moist until germination. The seedlings were removed and transplanted to pots 8 days later, with a maximum of 2 plants to a pot. Each pot was watered once a day to keep the soil moist.

The nitrogen fertilizer treatment was applied to the plant pots 12 days after transplantation. The control group received no treatment, while the first experimental group received a low concentration, and the second experimental group received a high concentration. There were 5 pots in each group, and each plant pot was labelled to indicate the group the plants belonged to.

50 days after the start of the experiment, plant height was measured for all plants. A measuring tape was used to record the length of the plant from ground level to the top of the tallest leaf.

In your results section, you should report the results of any statistical analysis procedures that you undertook. You should clearly state how the results of statistical tests support or refute your initial hypotheses.

The main results to report include:

• any descriptive statistics
• statistical test results
• the significance of the test results
• estimates of standard error or confidence intervals

The mean heights of the plants in the control group, low nitrogen group, and high nitrogen groups were 20.3, 25.1, and 29.6 cm respectively. A one-way ANOVA was applied to calculate the effect of nitrogen fertilizer level on plant height. The results demonstrated statistically significant ( p = .03) height differences between groups.

Next, post-hoc tests were performed to assess the primary and secondary hypotheses. In support of the primary hypothesis, the high nitrogen group plants were significantly taller than the low nitrogen group and the control group plants. Similarly, the results supported the secondary hypothesis: the low nitrogen plants were taller than the control group plants.

These results can be reported in the text or in tables and figures. Use text for highlighting a few key results, but present large sets of numbers in tables, or show relationships between variables with graphs.

You should also include sample calculations in the Results section for complex experiments. For each sample calculation, provide a brief description of what it does and use clear symbols. Present your raw data in the Appendices section and refer to it to highlight any outliers or trends.

The Discussion section will help demonstrate your understanding of the experimental process and your critical thinking skills.

In this section, you can:

• Interpret your results
• Compare your findings with your expectations
• Identify any sources of experimental error
• Explain any unexpected results
• Suggest possible improvements for further studies

Interpreting your results involves clarifying how your results help you answer your main research question. Report whether your results support your hypotheses.

• Did you measure what you sought out to measure?
• Were your analysis procedures appropriate for this type of data?

Compare your findings with other research and explain any key differences in findings.

• Are your results in line with those from previous studies or your classmates’ results? Why or why not?

An effective Discussion section will also highlight the strengths and limitations of a study.

• Did you have high internal validity or reliability?
• How did you establish these aspects of your study?

When describing limitations, use specific examples. For example, if random error contributed substantially to the measurements in your study, state the particular sources of error (e.g., imprecise apparatus) and explain ways to improve them.

The results support the hypothesis that nitrogen levels affect plant height, with increasing levels producing taller plants. These statistically significant results are taken together with previous research to support the importance of nitrogen as a nutrient for tomato plant growth.

However, unlike previous studies, this study focused on plant height as an indicator of plant growth in the present experiment. Importantly, plant height may not always reflect plant health or fruit yield, so measuring other indicators would have strengthened the study findings.

Another limitation of the study is the plant height measurement technique, as the measuring tape was not suitable for plants with extreme curvature. Future studies may focus on measuring plant height in different ways.

The main strengths of this study were the controls for extraneous variables, such as pH and carbon levels of the soil. All other factors that could affect plant height were tightly controlled to isolate the effects of nitrogen levels, resulting in high internal validity for this study.

Your conclusion should be the final section of your lab report. Here, you’ll summarize the findings of your experiment, with a brief overview of the strengths and limitations, and implications of your study for further research.

Some lab reports may omit a Conclusion section because it overlaps with the Discussion section, but you should check with your instructor before doing so.

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A lab report conveys the aim, methods, results, and conclusions of a scientific experiment . Lab reports are commonly assigned in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields.

The purpose of a lab report is to demonstrate your understanding of the scientific method with a hands-on lab experiment. Course instructors will often provide you with an experimental design and procedure. Your task is to write up how you actually performed the experiment and evaluate the outcome.

In contrast, a research paper requires you to independently develop an original argument. It involves more in-depth research and interpretation of sources and data.

A lab report is usually shorter than a research paper.

The sections of a lab report can vary between scientific fields and course requirements, but it usually contains the following:

• Abstract: summarizes your research aims, methods, results, and conclusions
• References: list of all sources cited using a specific style (e.g. APA)
• Appendices: contains lengthy materials, procedures, tables or figures

The results chapter or section simply and objectively reports what you found, without speculating on why you found these results. The discussion interprets the meaning of the results, puts them in context, and explains why they matter.

In qualitative research , results and discussion are sometimes combined. But in quantitative research , it’s considered important to separate the objective results from your interpretation of them.

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Tips on How to Write a Lab Report: A Full Guide

What Is a Lab Report

Let's start with a burning question: what is lab report? A lab report is an overview of your scientific experiment. It describes what you did (the course of the experiment), how you did it (what equipment and materials you used), and what outcome your experiment led to.

If you take any science classes involving a lab experiment – or full-fledged laboratory courses, you'll have to do your share of lab report writing.

Unlike the format of case study writing , lab reports have to follow a different structure. They, along with other lab report guidelines, are likely defined by your instructor. Your lab notebook may also contain the requirements.

But if it's not your case, here's what to include in a lab report:

• title page;
• introduction;
• equipment and materials list;
• conclusion;
• appendices.

If this structure looks intimidating now, don't worry: we'll break down every component below.

Format for Lab Reports

Different instructors require different formats for lab reports. So, look through the requirements you've received and see if a science lab report format is specified.

If no format is specified, see if your school, college, or university has specific formatting guidelines or a lab report template to follow.

If that's also not the case, then you can choose the most common formatting style for research papers and lab reports alike: the APA (American Psychology Association) format. Other options include the MLA (Modern Language Association) and Chicago styles.

APA Lab Report Style

Let's break down the main particularities of using the APA style for lab reports. When it comes to the lab report outline, this style dictates that you should include the following:

• a title page;
• an abstract;
• sources (as a References page).

How to format references under the APA format deserves a separate blog post. But here's a short example:

Smith, J. (2021). A lab report introduction guide. Cambridge Press.

To cite this source in the text, style it like this: (Smith, 2021)

As for the text formatting, here are the key APA guidelines to keep in mind:

• page margins: 1" (on all sides);
• indent: 0.5";
• page number: in the upper right corner;
• spacing: double;
• font: Times New Roman 12 pt.

How Long Should a Lab Report Be?

The appropriate report length depends heavily on the kind of experiment conducted – and on the requirements set by your instructor. That said, most lab reports are five to ten pages long, in our experience. That includes all the raw data, appendices, and graphs.

Need a lab report example? You'll find three below!

What's the Difference Between Lab Reports & Research Papers?

While lab report format and structure are similar to that of a research paper, they differ. But unfortunately, in our work as a college essay writing service , we see them confused often enough.

The key differences between lab reports and research papers are:

• Lab reports require you to conduct a hands-on experiment, while research papers are focused on the interpretation of existing data;
• A lab report's purpose is to show that you understand the scientific methods central to the experimental procedure – that's why the lab report template is different, too;
• A lab experiment doesn't require you to have an original hypothesis or argument;
• Research papers are usually longer than lab reports.

How to Do a Lab Report: Outline

Like with any other papers, from SWOT analysis to case studies, writing lab reports is easier when you have a clear college lab report outline in front of you. Luckily for you, the lab report structure is the same in most cases.

So, here's how to do a lab report – follow this outline (unless your instructor's requirements contradict it!):

• Title page: your name, course, instructor, and the report title;
• Abstract: a short description of the key findings and their significance;
• Introduction: the purpose of the lab experiment and its background information;
• Methods and materials: what you used during the experiment (e.g., a lab manual, certain reagents, etc.);
• Procedure: the detailed description of the lab experiment;
• Results: the outcome of your experiment and its interpretation;
• Conclusion: what your findings may mean for the field;
• References: the list of your sources;
• Appendices: raw data, calculations, graphs, etc.

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Guide on How to Write a Lab Report

If the outline above is overwhelming at first, don't worry! As a paper and essay writing service , we've had our share of experience in writing lab reports. Today, we'd like to share this experience with you in this lab report guide.

So, below you'll find everything you need to know on how to write a good lab report, along with handy lab report guidelines!

Lab Report Title Page

The lab report title page should include your name, student code, and any lab partners you may have had. It should also contain the date of the experiment and the title of your report.

The title length should be less than ten words. You'll also need to include the name of the academic supervisor in your lab report title page if you have one.

This paragraph describes your experiment, its main point, and its findings in a nutshell. Here are several guidelines on how to write an abstract for a lab report:

• Keep it under 200 words;
• Start with the purpose of your experiment;
• Describe the experimental procedure;
• State the results;
• Include 2-3 keywords (optional).

Lab Report Introduction

The first paragraph is where you explain your hypothesis and the purpose of your experiment. You can also add any previous research on the matter and any background information worth including. Here's a short lab report introduction example with a hypothesis:

This experiment examined the correlation between the levels of CO2 and the rate of photosynthesis in Chlorella algae. The latter was quantified by measuring the levels of RuBisCO.

Equipment (Methods and Materials)

Next in the lab report structure is the equipment section (also known as methods and materials). This is where you mention your lab manual, methods used during the experimental procedure, and the materials list.

In this part of the report, ensure to include all the details of the experimental procedure. It should provide readers with everything they need to know to replicate your study.

Procedure (with Graphs & Figures)

This part is, perhaps, the easiest (unlike how to write a hypothesis for a lab report). You should simply document the course of the lab experiment step-by-step, in chronological order.

This is usually a significant part of the report, taking up most of it. So make sure to provide detailed information on your hands-on experience!

Results Section

This is the overview of your experiment's findings (also known as the discussion section). Here's how to write a results section for a lab report:

• Discuss the outcome of the experiment;
• Explain how it pertains to your hypothesis (whether it proves or disproves it);
• Keep it brief and concise.

Note . You might notice that describing future work or further studies is absent from the tips on how to write the discussion section of a lab report. That's because it's a part of the conclusion, not the discussion.

This is where you sum up the results of your experiment and draw any major conclusions. You may also suggest future laboratory experiments or further research.

Here's how to write a conclusion for a lab report in three steps:

• Explain the results of your experiment;
• Determine their significance – and any limitations to the experimental design;
• Suggest future studies (if applicable).

The conclusion part of lab reports is typically short. So, don't worry if you can't write a lengthy one – you don't have to!

This is the part of your lab report outline where you list all of the sources you relied on in your lab experiments. It should include your lab manual, along with any relevant recommended reading from your course. You may also include any extra sources you used.

Remember to format your references list according to the formatting style you have to follow. Apart from every entry's formatting, you'll also have to present your references in alphabetical order based on the author's last name (for APA lab reports).

Finally, any lab report format includes appendices – your figures and graphs, in other words. This is where you add your raw data in tables, complete calculations, charts, etc.

Keep in mind: just like with sources, you need to cite each of the appendices in the main body of the report. Remember to format the appendix and its citation according to the chosen formatting style.

Lab Report Examples

As a paper and dissertation writing service , we know that sometimes it's better to see a great example of how to write a lab report once than to read dozens of tips. So, we've asked our lab report writing service to prepare a lab report template for three disciplines: chemistry, biology, and science.

Look at these samples if you keep wondering how to do a lab report! But keep in mind: you won't be able to use them as-is. So instead, use them as examples for your writing.

Note . References to lab manuals are made up – you should refer to the one you use in the experiment!

How to Write a Formal Lab Report for Chemistry?

The same lab report guidelines listed above apply to chemistry lab reports. Here's a short example that includes a lab report introduction, equipment, procedure, results, and references for an electrolysis reaction.

How to Write a Lab Report for Biology?

Next up in your lab report guide, it's a biology lab report! Like in any other lab report, its main point is to describe your experiment and explain its findings. Below you can find an example of one biology lab report that seeks to explain how to extract DNA from sliced fruit and make it visible to the naked eye.

How to Write a Science Lab Report?

Finally, let's look at a general science lab report. In this case, the science lab report format is the same as for other disciplines: start with the introduction and hypothesis, describe the equipment and procedure, and explain the outcome.

Here's a science lab report example on testing the density of different juices.

7 More Tips on How to Write a Lab Report

Need some more guidance on writing lab reports? Then, we've got you covered! Here are seven more tips on writing an excellent report:

• Carefully examine your lab manual before starting the experiment;
• Take detailed notes throughout the process;
• Be conscious of any limitations of your experimental design – and mention them in conclusion;
• Stick to the lab report structure defined by your instructor;
• Be transparent about any experimental error that may occur;
• Search for examples if you feel stuck with writing lab reports;
• Triple-check your lab report before submitting it: look for formatting issues, sources forgotten, and grammar and syntax mistakes.

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The Laboratory Summary & Analysis by Robert Browning

• Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis
• Poetic Devices
• Vocabulary & References
• Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme
• Line-by-Line Explanations

"The Laboratory" is one of English poet Robert Browning's famous dramatic monologues—poems written in the voice of a particular character, as if they were speeches from a play. In this poem, a 17th-century French lady from the court of Louis XIV visits a chemist's laboratory with a dark purpose in mind: tormented by jealousy, she intends to poison her romantic rival. Her sadistic cheerfulness at the prospect suggests that jealousy is itself a poison, able to corrode a person's very soul. The poem was first published in Browning's important 1845 collection Dramatic Romances and Lyrics .

• Read the full text of “The Laboratory”

The Full Text of “The Laboratory”

Ancien Régime

1 Now that I, tying thy glass mask tightly,

2 May gaze thro’ these faint smokes curling whitely,

3 As thou pliest thy trade in this devil’s-smithy—

4 Which is the poison to poison her, prithee?

5 He is with her, and they know that I know

6 Where they are, what they do: they believe my tears flow

7 While they laugh, laugh at me, at me fled to the drear

8 Empty church, to pray God in, for them!—I am here.

9 Grind away, moisten and mash up thy paste,

10 Pound at thy powder,—I am not in haste!

11 Better sit thus and observe thy strange things,

12 Than go where men wait me and dance at the King’s.

13 That in the mortar—you call it a gum?

14 Ah, the brave tree whence such gold oozings come!

15 And yonder soft phial, the exquisite blue,

16 Sure to taste sweetly,—is that poison too?

17 Had I but all of them, thee and thy treasures,

18 What a wild crowd of invisible pleasures!

19 To carry pure death in an earring, a casket,

20 A signet, a fan-mount, a filigree basket!

21 Soon, at the King’s, a mere lozenge to give

22 And Pauline should have just thirty minutes to live!

23 But to light a pastile, and Elise, with her head

24 And her breast and her arms and her hands, should drop dead!

25 Quick—is it finished? The colour’s too grim!

26 Why not soft like the phial’s, enticing and dim?

27 Let it brighten her drink, let her turn it and stir,

28 And try it and taste, ere she fix and prefer!

29 What a drop! She’s not little, no minion like me—

30 That’s why she ensnared him: this never will free

31 The soul from those masculine eyes,—say, “no!”

32 To that pulse’s magnificent come-and-go.

33 For only last night, as they whispered, I brought

34 My own eyes to bear on her so, that I thought

35 Could I keep them one half minute fixed, she would fall,

36 Shrivelled; she fell not; yet this does it all!

37 Not that I bid you spare her the pain!

38 Let death be felt and the proof remain;

39 Brand, burn up, bite into its grace—

40 He is sure to remember her dying face!

41 Is it done? Take my mask off! Nay, be not morose;

42 It kills her, and this prevents seeing it close:

43 The delicate droplet, my whole fortune’s fee—

44 If it hurts her, beside, can it ever hurt me?

45 Now, take all my jewels, gorge gold to your fill,

46 You may kiss me, old man, on my mouth if you will!

47 But brush this dust off me, lest horror it brings

48 Ere I know it—next moment I dance at the King’s!

“The Laboratory” Summary

“the laboratory” themes.

The Terrible Power of Jealousy

• See where this theme is active in the poem.

Sexism and Women's Oppression

The Power and Danger of Scientific Knowledge

Line-by-line explanation & analysis of “the laboratory”.

Now that I, tying thy glass mask tightly, May gaze thro’ these faint smokes curling whitely, As thou pliest thy trade in this devil’s-smithy— Which is the poison to poison her, prithee?

He is with her, and they know that I know Where they are, what they do: they believe my tears flow While they laugh, laugh at me, at me fled to the drear Empty church, to pray God in, for them!—I am here.

Grind away, moisten and mash up thy paste, Pound at thy powder,—I am not in haste! Better sit thus and observe thy strange things, Than go where men wait me and dance at the King’s.

Lines 13-16

That in the mortar—you call it a gum? Ah, the brave tree whence such gold oozings come! And yonder soft phial, the exquisite blue, Sure to taste sweetly,—is that poison too?

Lines 17-20

Had I but all of them, thee and thy treasures, What a wild crowd of invisible pleasures! To carry pure death in an earring, a casket, A signet, a fan-mount, a filigree basket!

Lines 21-24

Soon, at the King’s, a mere lozenge to give And Pauline should have just thirty minutes to live! But to light a pastile, and Elise, with her head And her breast and her arms and her hands, should drop dead!

Lines 25-28

Quick—is it finished? The colour’s too grim! Why not soft like the phial’s, enticing and dim? Let it brighten her drink, let her turn it and stir, And try it and taste, ere she fix and prefer!

Lines 29-32

What a drop! She’s not little, no minion like me— That’s why she ensnared him: this never will free The soul from those masculine eyes,—say, “no!” To that pulse’s magnificent come-and-go.

Lines 33-36

For only last night, as they whispered, I brought My own eyes to bear on her so, that I thought Could I keep them one half minute fixed, she would fall, Shrivelled; she fell not; yet this does it all!

Lines 37-40

Not that I bid you spare her the pain! Let death be felt and the proof remain; Brand, burn up, bite into its grace— He is sure to remember her dying face!

Lines 41-44

Is it done? Take my mask off! Nay, be not morose; It kills her, and this prevents seeing it close: The delicate droplet, my whole fortune’s fee— If it hurts her, beside, can it ever hurt me?

Lines 45-48

Now, take all my jewels, gorge gold to your fill, You may kiss me, old man, on my mouth if you will! But brush this dust off me, lest horror it brings Ere I know it—next moment I dance at the King’s!

“The Laboratory” Symbols

• See where this symbol appears in the poem.

“The Laboratory” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language

• See where this poetic device appears in the poem.

Parallelism

Alliteration, “the laboratory” vocabulary.

Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.

• Thy, Thou, Thee
• As thou pliest thy trade
• Devil's-smithy
• The King's
• The brave tree whence such gold oozings come
• Yonder soft phial
• A casket, a signet, a fan-mount, a filigree-basket
• Ere she fix and prefer
• Nay, be not morose
• See where this vocabulary word appears in the poem.

Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “The Laboratory”

Rhyme scheme, “the laboratory” speaker, “the laboratory” setting, literary and historical context of “the laboratory”, more “the laboratory” resources, external resources.

The Poem Aloud — Listen to a dramatic reading of the poem.

Browing at the Victorian Web — Find a wealth of resources on Browning's life and work at the Victorian Web research site.

A Brief Biography — Learn about Browning's life and times via the Poetry Foundation.

The Poem Illustrated — See Pre-Raphaelite artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti's painted interpretation of the poem.

The Poem's Inspiration — Learn about the Marquise de Brinvilliers, one of the real-life poisoners upon whom this poem was based.

LitCharts on Other Poems by Robert Browning

A Light Woman

Among the Rocks

A Toccata of Galuppi's

A Woman's Last Word

Confessions

Home-Thoughts, from Abroad

How they Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix

Life in a Love

Love Among the Ruins

Love in a Life

Meeting at Night

My Last Duchess

Pictor Ignotus

Porphyria's Lover

Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister

The Bishop Orders His Tomb at Saint Praxed's Church

The Last Ride Together

The Lost Leader

The Lost Mistress

The Patriot

The Pied Piper of Hamelin

Women and Roses

Ask LitCharts AI: The answer to your questions

Are you seeking one-on-one college counseling and/or essay support? Limited spots are now available. Click here to learn more.

How to Write a Lab Report – with Example/Template

April 11, 2024

Perhaps you’re in the midst of your challenging AP chemistry class in high school, or perhaps college you’re enrolled in biology , chemistry , or physics at university. At some point, you will likely be asked to write a lab report. Sometimes, your teacher or professor will give you specific instructions for how to format and write your lab report, and if so, use that. In case you’re left to your own devices, here are some guidelines you might find useful. Continue reading for the main elements of a lab report, followed by a detailed description of the more writing-heavy parts (with a lab report example/lab report template). Lastly, we’ve included an outline that can help get you started.

What is a lab report?

A lab report is an overview of your experiment. Essentially, it explains what you did in the experiment and how it went. Most lab reports end up being 5-10 pages long (graphs or other images included), though the length depends on the experiment. Here are some brief explanations of the essential parts of a lab report:

Title : The title says, in the most straightforward way possible, what you did in the experiment. Often, the title looks something like, “Effects of ____ on _____.” Sometimes, a lab report also requires a title page, which includes your name (and the names of any lab partners), your instructor’s name, and the date of the experiment.

Abstract : This is a short description of key findings of the experiment so that a potential reader could get an idea of the experiment before even beginning.

Introduction : This is comprised of one or several paragraphs summarizing the purpose of the lab. The introduction usually includes the hypothesis, as well as some background information.

Lab Report Example (Continued)

Materials : Perhaps the simplest part of your lab report, this is where you list everything needed for the completion of your experiment.

Methods : This is where you describe your experimental procedure. The section provides necessary information for someone who would want to replicate your study. In paragraph form, write out your methods in chronological order, though avoid excessive detail.

Data : Here, you should document what happened in the experiment, step-by-step. This section often includes graphs and tables with data, as well as descriptions of patterns and trends. You do not need to interpret all of the data in this section, but you can describe trends or patterns, and state which findings are interesting and/or significant.

Discussion of results : This is the overview of your findings from the experiment, with an explanation of how they pertain to your hypothesis, as well as any anomalies or errors.

Conclusion : Your conclusion will sum up the results of your experiment, as well as their significance. Sometimes, conclusions also suggest future studies.

Sources : Often in APA style , you should list all texts that helped you with your experiment. Make sure to include course readings, outside sources, and other experiments that you may have used to design your own.

How to write the abstract

The abstract is the experiment stated “in a nutshell”: the procedure, results, and a few key words. The purpose of the academic abstract is to help a potential reader get an idea of the experiment so they can decide whether to read the full paper. So, make sure your abstract is as clear and direct as possible, and under 200 words (though word count varies).

When writing an abstract for a scientific lab report, we recommend covering the following points:

• Background : Why was this experiment conducted?
• Objectives : What problem is being addressed by this experiment?
• Methods : How was the study designed and conducted?
• Results : What results were found and what do they mean?
• Conclusion : Were the results expected? Is this problem better understood now than before? If so, how?

How to write the introduction

The introduction is another summary, of sorts, so it could be easy to confuse the introduction with the abstract. While the abstract tends to be around 200 words summarizing the entire study, the introduction can be longer if necessary, covering background information on the study, what you aim to accomplish, and your hypothesis. Unlike the abstract (or the conclusion), the introduction does not need to state the results of the experiment.

Here is a possible order with which you can organize your lab report introduction:

• Intro of the intro : Plainly state what your study is doing.
• Background : Provide a brief overview of the topic being studied. This could include key terms and definitions. This should not be an extensive literature review, but rather, a window into the most relevant topics a reader would need to understand in order to understand your research.
• Importance : Now, what are the gaps in existing research? Given the background you just provided, what questions do you still have that led you to conduct this experiment? Are you clarifying conflicting results? Are you undertaking a new area of research altogether?
• Prediction: The plants placed by the window will grow faster than plants placed in the dark corner.
• Hypothesis: Basil plants placed in direct sunlight for 2 hours per day grow at a higher rate than basil plants placed in direct sunlight for 30 minutes per day.
• How you test your hypothesis : This is an opportunity to briefly state how you go about your experiment, but this is not the time to get into specific details about your methods (save this for your results section). Keep this part down to one sentence, and voila! You have your introduction.

How to write a discussion section

Here, we’re skipping ahead to the next writing-heavy section, which will directly follow the numeric data of your experiment. The discussion includes any calculations and interpretations based on this data. In other words, it says, “Now that we have the data, why should we care?”  This section asks, how does this data sit in relation to the hypothesis? Does it prove your hypothesis or disprove it? The discussion is also a good place to mention any mistakes that were made during the experiment, and ways you would improve the experiment if you were to repeat it. Like the other written sections, it should be as concise as possible.

Here is a list of points to cover in your lab report discussion:

• Weaker statement: These findings prove that basil plants grow more quickly in the sunlight.
• Stronger statement: These findings support the hypothesis that basil plants placed in direct sunlight grow at a higher rate than basil plants given less direct sunlight.
• Factors influencing results : This is also an opportunity to mention any anomalies, errors, or inconsistencies in your data. Perhaps when you tested the first round of basil plants, the days were sunnier than the others. Perhaps one of the basil pots broke mid-experiment so it needed to be replanted, which affected your results. If you were to repeat the study, how would you change it so that the results were more consistent?
• Implications : How do your results contribute to existing research? Here, refer back to the gaps in research that you mentioned in your introduction. Do these results fill these gaps as you hoped?
• Questions for future research : Based on this, how might your results contribute to future research? What are the next steps, or the next experiments on this topic? Make sure this does not become too broad—keep it to the scope of this project.

How to write a lab report conclusion

This is your opportunity to briefly remind the reader of your findings and finish strong. Your conclusion should be especially concise (avoid going into detail on findings or introducing new information).

Here are elements to include as you write your conclusion, in about 1-2 sentences each:

• Restate your goals : What was the main question of your experiment? Refer back to your introduction—similar language is okay.
• Restate your methods : In a sentence or so, how did you go about your experiment?
• Key findings : Briefly summarize your main results, but avoid going into detail.
• Limitations : What about your experiment was less-than-ideal, and how could you improve upon the experiment in future studies?
• Significance and future research : Why is your research important? What are the logical next-steps for studying this topic?

Template for beginning your lab report

Here is a compiled outline from the bullet points in these sections above, with some examples based on the (overly-simplistic) basil growth experiment. Hopefully this will be useful as you begin your lab report.

1) Title (ex: Effects of Sunlight on Basil Plant Growth )

2) Abstract (approx. 200 words)

• Background ( This experiment looks at… )
• Objectives ( It aims to contribute to research on…)
• Methods ( It does so through a process of…. )
• Results (Findings supported the hypothesis that… )
• Conclusion (These results contribute to a wider understanding about…)

3) Introduction (approx. 1-2 paragraphs)

• Intro ( This experiment looks at… )
• Background ( Past studies on basil plant growth and sunlight have found…)
• Importance ( This experiment will contribute to these past studies by…)
• Hypothesis ( Basil plants placed in direct sunlight for 2 hours per day grow at a higher rate than basil plants placed in direct sunlight for 30 minutes per day.)
• How you will test your hypothesis ( This hypothesis will be tested by a process of…)

4) Materials (list form) (ex: pots, soil, seeds, tables/stands, water, light source )

5) Methods (approx. 1-2 paragraphs) (ex: 10 basil plants were measured throughout a span of…)

6) Data (brief description and figures) (ex: These charts demonstrate a pattern that the basil plants placed in direct sunlight…)

7) Discussion (approx. 2-3 paragraphs)

• Support or reject hypothesis ( These findings support the hypothesis that basil plants placed in direct sunlight grow at a higher rate than basil plants given less direct sunlight.)
• Factors that influenced your results ( Outside factors that could have altered the results include…)
• Implications ( These results contribute to current research on basil plant growth and sunlight because…)
• Questions for further research ( Next steps for this research could include…)
• Restate your goals ( In summary, the goal of this experiment was to measure…)
• Restate your methods ( This hypothesis was tested by…)
• Key findings ( The findings supported the hypothesis because…)
• Limitations ( Although, certain elements were overlooked, including…)
• Significance and future research ( This experiment presents possibilities of future research contributions, such as…)
• Sources (approx. 1 page, usually in APA style)

Final thoughts – Lab Report Example

Hopefully, these descriptions have helped as you write your next lab report. Remember that different instructors may have different preferences for structure and format, so make sure to double-check when you receive your assignment. All in all, make sure to keep your scientific lab report concise, focused, honest, and organized. Good luck!

For more reading on coursework success, check out the following articles:

• How to Write the AP Lang Argument Essay (With Example)
• How to Write the AP Lang Rhetorical Analysis Essay (With Example)
• 49 Most Interesting Biology Research Topics
• 50 Best Environmental Science Research Topics
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Guide on How to Write a Laboratory Report Essay

Students who take lab courses are often required to write lab report essays. Lab report essay is more than just recording the procedure and results of the laboratory experiment. You must demonstrate your understanding on the subject by discussing on the experiment in terms of the theoretical issues that you are studying in the course. Lab report essay accounts for a substantial amount of points in your course up to 25%. If you have done a lot of errors in your lab essay and you fail it, it is likely that you will also not pass the course and have to retake it. Usually, the lab report will consists of several components that must be arranged in the right order.

The first page of the lab report is the title page which contains basic information about the experiment including experiment name, participants of the lab experiment and the date when the experiment was conducted. The title must be straightforward and not be too long. Ideally, the title should have 6 – 10 words. The abstract which consists of 1 – 2 paragraphs should take up just one page and has a maximum of 200 words. The abstract must mention the purpose, result, the important findings which is used for the discussion and a conclusion.

The introduction is followed after the abstract. The introduction should give a brief description of the experiment purpose, equipment’s used in the lab experiment and the theory that you are trying to prove. Methods and materials is the fourth component of the lab report essay. It is best to use a list to outline all the experiment equipment’s used. You must double check and make sure all the equipment’s are included in the list. The fifth component is to experiment procedure where you will describe about the process of how the experiment take place step by step in a few paragraph.

The sixth component is the results page where you will describe in detailed the results and tables.  Appendices can be used to explain the special features in the charts and graphs. The discussion is the main part of the report where you will compare results with similar cases and analyze any error found in the experiment. You should explain the result in terms of the theory that your lab report requires you to illustrate.

When explaining the result, make sure you relate it to the objectives of the experiment. In addition, you should also provide analysis on the strengths and weaknesses of the experiment findings. The conclusion does not have to be long and can be just a short paragraph. The conclusion must state clearly what is known from the experiment and provide justification. You can recommend more research to be conducted in the conclusion. The lab report must include references to any outside materials that you use when writing the report. The last part is the appendix and you should describe each item in different appendix.

Writing a lab report can be difficult for some students. If you are facing difficulty in finishing your lab report, you should seek help from an essay writing company. The essay writing company can help you no matter what part of the lab report essay you face problem.

The professional writers at the essay writing company know how to write the lab report in a way that can help you to achieve an A grade. The integrated chat system in your account gives you the opportunity to ask questions and get immediate answers. With the chat system, the writer can be like a teacher to you and you can ask him teach you how to write each component of the lab report. Get more details at https://essayshark.com/ .

When hiring an essay writing company, make sure you are given the choice to select your own writer. Everything you need to assess the writer can be found in his profile. It is also all right to request a sample from the writer. This sample is free and you only pay when the writer deliver the completed essay. You don’t have to worry about receiving an essay that is full of spelling and grammar errors because your essay will be proofread by a professional proofreader. It will also be checked with a plagiarism checker tool to ensure that your paper is plagiarism free.

You don’t have to keep messaging the writer on the chat system to find out how much he has written. The progress bar in your account shows how many percentage of the essay assignment has been completed. You can check the completed part of the essay right from your account without having to download it. Customers can release just the partial payment in order to download the part that is completed. The rest of the payment can be released after the writer has finished writing the rest of the essay.

You should avoid essay writing companies that collect upfront payment without giving you the chance of reviewing the essay first. In addition, the essay writing services that you hire must be covered by a money back guarantee. With the money back guarantee, you can request for a refund if you found mistakes in the essay after you have already submitted the payment.

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