Novice undergraduate students can struggle with identifying what topics belong in each section of a lab report, and developing a project that is achievable, often due to a broadness in scope. Working in groups students were given an excerpt of the methods and results section of a published paper (Czackes et al. 2018) and asked to: 1) Determine what question the study was investigating.2) Outline what topics they would include in the introduction section of a paper. 3)Outline what topics they would include in the discussion section of a paper.
Students were then given the complete original paper (Czackes et al. 2018) and asked to reflect on the differences between their efforts and the published paper. Guiding questions for the reflection included: 1) Do you think the authors missed something you included? 2) Do you see why the authors included what they did? 3) What did you learn about how to structure a research paper or lab report?
This exercise was delivered after students had completed the data collection for the term lab project and prior to submitting their own discussion sections.
This exercise was developed by the Teaching Assistants, and allowed them to practice skills.
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