A Scaffolded Approach to Laboratory Report Writing for Non-Major and Introductory Physics Classes

Laboratory report assignments for non-major and introductory classes can be challenging because the students are unfamiliar with the type of technical writing required and the subject matter. These issues for the student make the grading for the instructor difficult and time consuming. Determining the level of detail to require, the format, and how to distribute the grading between good writing and physics knowledge is a difficult balancing act. Many courses use laboratory reports to assess if a student can communicate scientific concepts effectively so ignoring the writing issues is not an option, but many students have no experience reading technical documents, let alone writing them. Furthermore, the students need to understand the scientific concepts to effectively communicate them. In this article, a method for providing a scaffolded approach to lab reports is given. This approach aims to provide the student with some much needed examples of technical writing while they are new to the laboratory environment and the course material. A sample lab report template was provided with key information and conclusions removed. As the course continued, the students were required to do an increasing amount of independent writing while the provided content was slowly decreased. By the end of the course the students submitted full independently written lab reports.