Evaluating Laboratory Report Writing Skills

Western Kentucky University Physics and Astronomy Department's University Physics 1 Labs utilize several strategies to teach good writing skills. This includes two examples lab reports, one good and one poor, that students evaluated according to the grading rubric which is used to evaluate student's work. Students initially turned in partial reports, responsible for one section addition section each week, which were evaluated and returned to the student with feedback. Copies of student work were kept and coded for quality of many different aspects of the report. Different patterns of student progression over the semester were observed. For example, the quality of the experimental description showed improvement with time while the data and analysis section fluctuated with no over-all trend. More results and implications for instruction will be presented.