In the Classroom
Developing Technical Writing Skills in the Physical Chemistry Laboratory: A Progressive Approach Employing Peer Review Derek E. Gragson and John P. Hagen* Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, California 93407 *
[email protected] The importance of helping undergraduate students develop their ability to communicate in written form about chemistry and biochemistry cannot be overstated. Regardless of the path students choose postgraduation, they will be expected to write about their work throughout their professional careers. Many articles have appeared in this Journal that discuss the importance of technical writing in the undergraduate curriculum and provide examples of pedagogies employed to improve technical writing abilities (1-12). Common to this literature, there seem to be three critical components employed in successful pedagogies aimed at improving technical writing. These components are providing appropriate guidance or expectations and ensuring students have time for both review and revision of their writing. We developed an approach that implements the guidance component in a progressive manner and incorporates the review and revision components by using the peer-review process. While we discuss the application of our approach to the physical chemistry laboratory the approach could be employed in any laboratory course where students are expected to write formal “journal-style” laboratory reports. The physical chemistry laboratory is typically taught in the third year and is often one of the courses where students are expected to write formal “journal-style” lab reports. Both authors of this article have taught the physical chemistry laboratory for about 10 years and have been developing our current approach for the past 6 years. Students in our department generally take physical chemistry laboratory in their third or fourth year. The course typically has an enrollment of 10-18 students. When we started teaching the physical chemistry laboratory we adopted a more conventional approach to report writing in which each lab group, usually 2-3 students, submitted one formal lab report for each experiment. During a 10 week quarter students performed 10-15 experiments, which translated to 10-15 lab reports. Despite providing students with a sample report and a writing manual at the beginning of the quarter and written feedback on the lab reports that we handed back, we often found the quality of the lab reports was low. More importantly, the reports did not improve during the course. In our initial attempts to improve the writing we identified several aspects of our conventional approach that we felt were contributing to poorly written reports: the large number of reports assigned, insufficient initial guidance on expectations, poor collaboration within a group on writing reports, and the lack of a mechanism to encourage review and revision. When we
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decided to revise the course, we developed assignments designed to address each of the factors we felt contributed to poorly written lab reports. To address the large number of reports, we reduced the number of formal reports from 10-15 to 4, reasoning that with a decrease in quantity, we could require an increase in quality. Next, we developed detailed guidelines about writing and our expectations for lab reports; the amount of guidance decreased during the course, thus allowing students to gradually progress toward autonomy in their writing. Finally, we addressed the lack of opportunities for the review and revision processes and poor group collaboration by adopting a two-pronged peer-review process. During the process of making these adjustments we identified three guiding principles we believe are essential to improving technical writing skills: (i) less is sometimes more (fewer high-quality reports are better than more low-quality reports), (ii) initial guidance on writing and expectations that is gradually reduced leads to autonomy, and (iii) experience with the review and revision processes is essential to developing writing skills. We describe our current approach to fostering student-writing abilities in our physical chemistry laboratory course, and we have divided the description into sections based upon these guiding principles. Less Is More We reduced the number of formal lab reports required from 10-15 to just 4 in an effort to provide more time for developing the writing process. In doing this, we reduced the number of lab experiments to 10, which we felt appropriately covered the topics of thermodynamics and kinetics (experiments in quantum mechanics and spectroscopy are included in a second quarter of the physical chemistry laboratory). The laboratory experiments along with the chemical concepts and the type of assignments are listed in Table 1. For the first experiment the students individually write an abstract and a materials and methods section of a formal journalstyle lab report. Both of these are then peer reviewed using the Calibrated Peer Review (CPR) instructional tool (13, 14). Next, student groups (usually 2 or 3 students) write a complete, formal “journal-style” report for experiments 2-4 using a writing-cycle process that mimics the peer-review process employed by chemists when they write for the primary literature. Coupled together these two assignment-types allow time for the review
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In the Classroom Table 1. Physical Chemistry Experiments and the Associated Assignments and Chemical Concepts Experiment
a
Assignment
Chemical Concepts
Equilibrium and activities Written abstract and materials and methods; CPR assignment
Equilibria, activities, error analysis
Phospholipid monolayers Group report
Phase diagrams, clapeyron equation, critical behavior, intermolecular forces
Bomb calorimetry
Group report
Calorimetry, heat capacity, combustion
Successive kinetics
Group report
First-order kinetics, activation energy, gas chromatography, successive kinetics
Enthalpy of vaporization Excel report
Clausius-Clapeyron equation, intermolecular forces
Binary phase diagram of Excel report an azeotrope
Azeotropes, intermolecular forces
Photochromism
First-order kinetics, activation parameters, flash photolysis, photochromism, solvatochromism
Excel report
DNA melting curve
Excel report
ΔH°, ΔS°, and ΔG° for coil to helix transition
Critical micelle concentration
Excel report
ΔG°(micelle) and ΔG°(adsorption), area per molecule, Szyszkowski equation, Gibbs and Langmuir isotherms
Differential scanning calorimeter
Excel report
ΔH° and ΔS° for the solid-to-liquid transition in dipalmytoylphosphatidylcholine (DPPC)
a
Students choose one experiment from the last six experiments to individually write a formal journal-style report.
Figure 1. Excerpt from the Integrated Writing Guide: instructions for writing an abstract (upper right), the corresponding section from the example abstract (left), and a grading checklist (lower right).
and revision processes while providing a gradually increasing level of expectations. For the remaining six experiments students individually produce a one-page Excel report that includes the tables, figures, conclusions, and references that are necessary to convey the salient aspects of the experiment. Finally, students choose one experiment from these six to individually write a complete, formal journal-style lab report without any further guidance on writing. Collectively, these four assignment-types provide an increasing level of expectation and a decreasing level of guidance as the students progress from writing only two portions of a report, to writing full group reports, and finally to independently producing a full report. Initial Guidance Is Gradually Reduced When we began teaching this course, we gave students a writing manual at the beginning of each quarter. We found that many students were unable to apply the instructions given in the
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writing manual. We later handed out a sample lab report. However, we found that students' reports were often missing elements that were stated as requirements in the manual and present in the example report. Clearly the students were not checking their own work! We wanted to make the connection between our writing instructions, the sample report, and our grading obvious for the students. With this in mind, we developed the Integrated Writing Guide (IWG) and detailed grading rubrics. At the beginning of the quarter, we give each student a copy of the IWG. The guide consists of a sample lab report with each section of the report accompanied by a description explaining the role of each section and a grading checklist. The checklist is not a rubric; it is simply meant to aid the student by ensuring that he or she includes all required elements in each section of the report. An example of the abstract section is shown in Figure 1; the complete IWG is included in the supporting material. Using the IWG, the students can see our instructions applied to a sample report and know exactly what we are looking for when we grade
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In the Classroom
Figure 2. Excerpt from the grading rubric for the phospholipid experiment.
the reports. The IWG helps students become better critical readers of their own reports and better peer reviewers for their classmates' work. We developed detailed grading rubrics for experiments 2-4, which are posted on the course Web site at the beginning of the quarter. Students are encouraged to use these rubrics when preparing reports for experiments 2-4 as part of the writing cycle. These rubrics are similar to the grading checklist section of the IWG but are more detailed and include criteria that are specific to each experiment. An excerpt from one of the rubrics is shown in Figure 2; the complete set of rubrics is included in the supporting material. Together, the IWG and the grading rubrics provide detailed guidance on writing and what we are specifically looking for when we grade reports. We provide the rubrics only for experiments 2-4 to facilitate the student's progression toward writing independently. There are no rubrics or even content guidelines given for the last six experiments. As the students need only to prepare a one-page Excel report for the last six experiments, they can focus on the content rather than on the writing. We grade the Excel reports and provide feedback on the content and form of the report so students can further hone their ability to incorporate the important aspects obtained from the experiment. The culminating experience of the lab is the studentchoice report, which is an individual lab report. For this report students are not given a rubric or any guidance beyond the IWG. Experience with Review and Revision Processes Although the students worked well with each other while in the lab, they often collaborated poorly when writing group reports. Typically, each student would write a portion of the report, and the sections would be pasted together with no one checking the overall result. In the real world, chemists most often write journal articles in a collaborative and iterative process; drafts circulate many times among students, postdocs, and the principle investigator. To mimic this process, we decided to stress peer review and peer editing of student writing. This goal was accomplished by using the CPR instructional tool and a writingcycle process that mimics the peer-review process employed in writing the primary literature. CPR The general features of the CPR instructional tool are documented in several publications (15-21), and detailed instructions can be found on the CPR Web site (14). The CPR assignment consists of text entry, calibration, peer review, and self-assessment stages that we use to introduce students to critical reading and the peer-review process. Because we want to focus on critical reading and the review process, the CPR assignment is given with the first experiment where the students 64
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are required to write only the abstract and materials and methods section of their report. Students first upload the abstract they wrote for their first experiment to the CPR Web site. They then read three calibration abstracts of varying quality that we have written and grade these. In the next step, each student is randomly assigned three of his or her classmate's abstracts, which they read and grade online. Finally, students grade their own abstract in the self-assessment stage. The students then repeat the entire process for the materials and methods section. Each time a student grades a calibration document, a peer's text, or their own document they are given guiding questions to score the document. The student's ability to score the calibration documents correctly produces a reviewer competency index that is then applied in the peer-review and self-assessment stages. The guiding questions and the calibration documents help students develop their critical-reading abilities, and they often comment that they can improve their own documents after just this stage. Once the entire CPR assignment is complete, students are given access to the reviews by their peers and allowed to rewrite their documents before they turn them in for grading by their instructor. The peer-review process provides the students with useful feedback on their own documents, but we find the students also tend to compare their own writing with the writing of their peers. While this comparison might, at first glance, seem undesirable we find that it motivates, and even humbles, some students as most students generally see their writing as worse than their peers. From the beginning of the course we talk with the students about the writing requirements and how one goal is for everyone to improve his or her writing. We emphasize the idea that writing can always be improved. Their perception that their writing is not as good as their peers fits in well with this idea and motivates them toward improvement. Writing Cycle We reinforce critical-reading and peer-review skills introduced with the CPR assignment using a writing-cycle assignment given for experiments 2-4. For these experiments, students produce one report for each student group. Although the entire group performs the experiment and analyzes the data together, each person in the group is assigned one of three specific roles in preparing the report. To mimic the review process employed in writing in the primary literature, the roles are lead author, reviewer, and editor. Because there are three students in each group, three different roles, and three experiments, each student cycles through each role. The lead author has the principal responsibility for writing the lab report and has the grading rubric and IWG to help guide him or her on content and form. This is a full lab report that includes the sections (abstract, introduction, materials and methods, data, results, and conclusions) typically found in an
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In the Classroom
article in the primary literature. He or she turns in a copy of the first draft of the lab report to the instructor and to the reviewer on the Monday following the lab. The reviewer scores the lab report using the rubric provided and passes this review and the marked-up first draft on to the editor on the following Wednesday. The editor makes the corrections suggested by the reviewer and turns in the final copy of the report the following Monday. The roles rotate each week so each student experiences the three roles. Each of the three roles helps to foster a different aspect of writing and reviewing. The goal of the lead author role is to give students experience writing a full report on their own but with specific guidance provided through the rubrics and IWG. We expect that the students will use the feedback they received in the CPR assignment as well. The reviewer role allows students to apply the critical-reading skills they developed in the CPR assignment to a full report without having to worry about writing a report. Finally, the editor also gains experience with critical reading as he or she makes the final decision on the reviewer's suggested changes. Independent Full Report The culminating writing experience in the lab occurs when the students are asked to write a full lab report on one of the six Excel experiments; the student-choice report. This assignment becomes their chance to focus on writing as the data reduction and presentation are refined through the Excel report. The students are given a week to work on their reports, and class time is scheduled in the computer lab where they can ask questions and receive feedback on their reports. Conclusion Since we have implemented the changes in our course, we have seen a significant improvement in the quality of the lab reports written by the students. Students do not receive a rubric for the student-choice report, and yet we often receive studentchoice reports that are almost perfect. We believe that this results because the students have internalized the reviewing and revising skills that they learned from the IWG, CPR, and the writing cycle. Having reviewed their peers, they are now able to review their own writing. The students agree with this assessment as demonstrated by a few of their comments taken from the freeresponse portion of the course evaluations: I think the IWG was the most helpful handout throughout the quarter writing lab reports. I tried to use it in every aspect possible, even sentence structures. It really gives us specific directions on what the instructor expect[s] of us. I learned a lot in this class, especially in the art of writing a detailed lab report. The writing guide was helpful at first, but I believe that the rubrics were even more helpful. I liked doing the CPR and I think it helped in writing the laboratories. The integrated writing guide was very helpful.
Finally, it is important to note that it is the combination of our guiding principles and the assignments developed to address each principle that produced the greatest improvement in writing. For example, the review and revision exercises do not work as well without initially giving students specific guidance
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(the rubrics and IWG) on how to read and review. In summary, we found that improving writing required giving the students more time to write, providing more specific guidance on both the form and content of their reports, and including opportunities for them to gain experience with the review and revision processes. Acknowledgment We thank the other instructors in our physical chemistry laboratory course, Rod Schoonover, Dane Jones, Jennifer Retsek, and Seth Bush, who have helped us to implement the ideas discussed in this article. We also thank Lisa Volaric for the writing manual portion of the IWG, which was adapted with permission from her lab report handout. Literature Cited 1. Bressette, A. R.; Breton, G. W. J. Chem. Educ. 2001, 78, 1626– 1627. 2. Burke, K. A.; Greenbowe, T. J.; Hand, B. M. J. Chem. Educ. 2006, 83, 1032–1038. 3. Cacciatore, K. L.; Sevian, H. J. Chem. Educ. 2006, 83, 1039–1041. 4. Gordon, N. R.; Newton, T. A.; Rhodes, G.; Ricci, J. S.; Stebbins, R. G.; Tracy, H. J. J. Chem. Educ. 2001, 78, 53–55. 5. Hunter, A. D. J. Chem. Educ. 1998, 75, 1424. 6. Paulson, D. R. J. Chem. Educ. 2001, 78, 1047–1049. 7. Renaud, J.; Squier, C.; Larsen, S. C. J. Chem. Educ. 2006, 83, 1029– 1031. 8. Rudd, J. A., II; Greenbowe, T. J.; Hand, B. M. J. Chem. Educ. 2007, 84, 2007–2011. 9. Shibley, I. A., Jr; Milakofsky, L. K.; Nicotera, C. L. J. Chem. Educ. 2001, 78, 50–53. 10. Tilstra, L. J. Chem. Educ. 2001, 78, 762–764. 11. Wallner, A. S.; Latosi-Sawin, E. J. Chem. Educ. 1999, 76, 1404– 1406. 12. Whelan, R. J.; Zare, R. N. J. Chem. Educ. 2003, 80, 904–906. 13. Russell, A. A. Calibrated Peer Review: A Writing and CriticalThinking Instructional Tool. In Invention and Impact: Building Excellence in Undergraduate Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics ( STEM) Education; AAAS: Washington, DC, 2004; pp 67-71. 14. CPR Home Page. http://cpr.molsci.ucla.edu. Accessed September 2002. 15. Robinson, R. Am. Biol. Teach. 2001, 63, 474–480. 16. Cervato, C.; Rudd, J.; Ridky, R. Geo. Soc. Am. 2003, 35, A-441. 17. Heise, E. A.; Palmer-Julson, A.; Su, T. M. Geol. Soc. Am. 2002, 34, A-345. 18. Margerum, L. D.; Gulsrud, M.; Manlapez, R.; Rebong, R.; Love, A. J. Chem. Educ. 2007, 84, 292–295. 19. Gerdeman, R. D.; Russell, A. A.; Worden, K. J. J. Coll. Sci. Teach. 2007, 36, 46–52. 20. Russel, J.; Pearson, M. J. Coll. Sci. Teach. 2004, 33, 24–28. 21. Walvoord, M. E.; Hoefnagels, M. H.; Gaffin, D. D.; Chumchal, M. M.; Long, D. A. J. Coll. Sci. Teach. 2008, 37, 66–73.
Supporting Information Available The Integrated Writing Guide and grading rubrics. This material is available via the Internet at http://pubs.acs.org.
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