Grading Laboratory Notebooks in a Large Organic Chemistry Course Marjorie Kandel State University of New York at Stony Brook, Stony Brook, NY 11794 Laboratory notebooks are notoriously difficult to grade well, especially in a course like organic chemistry with little auantitative notebook content. By defining our goals and problems, we wrrc able to develop the grading method desrribed below. We are offering it, not as an original idea, but as an easy-to-manage progrim for others who share our concerns. Its greatest use would be in a course with large enrollment like ours (100-200 students). This paper does not discuss evaluation of aspects of students' work other than the laboratorv notebook. Our goals were to have students compose their own notebooks, not fill out forms, and t o evaluate them competently and uniformly. We focused on a number of problems in implementing these goals. I t is difficult to communicate to many students t h a t t h e notebook should be a document written as closely as possible to the actual performance of the experiment, that i t should be the primary document without editing or transfer of observations from another source, and that the content should be a complete description of the lab work accessible to others. T o show that notebooks embodying the above virtues are really the most valuable, it is necessary to give them the highest grades. I t is difficult to communicate to some graders that timeliness and complete observational content are the important grading criteria, not pleasing format or neatness. Another problem is the time wasted by students in copyingsuperfluous information into their notebooks and by graders in reading such expanded compositions. Finally, it is necessary to attempt t o ensure the individuality of each student's lab record. The method we developed was designed t o address these problems. First, the discussion of results was submitted in report form, separate from the notebook. This was so that the students would understand the importance of the notebook as a thine in itself. not aroueh draft for a ~ o l i s h e do ~ u s . Carbon copies of all notebook pages written i n a particular lab day were collected before the end of the period. Students were very busy in the laboratory, so opportunities for rec o.. ~ v i-n eor for collaboration would have been limited: they were further reduced by the watchfulness of our staff. I t was our policy to be strict regarding timely submission of carbons; late pages received a substantial grade penalty, t o emphasize the importance of writing the observations a t the actual time of the experiment. The content of the carbon pages was checked via a notebook exam. At the exam, students were asked questions only on procedural changes from their manual, data, and observations. They consulted their notebooks for answers, but the graders consulted the carbons that had been submitted in lab. In addition to the answer to a auestion.. the naee . - reference to the notebook had to be given. The answer was checked only for pertinence and for its Dresence on that Daee. For examole, if the student was expected to observe a heavy white precipitate a t a particular stage but instead observed a slight cloudiness, full credit
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Journal of Chemical Education
would have been given for an adequate description. We were satisfied that the carbon copy/notebook exam approach enabled us to achieve most of our goals:
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The average and median grade on the exam was 80%. Most students had notebooks that contained most of the relevant informstinn. ..~It is true that some students continuedto write far more than was called for, but many were encouraged to streamline. Handing in of carhans encouraged studrncs to keep up-ru-date records This w m our conrluriun and agreed with most rtudents' responses on a questionnaire. The exam enabled uniform grading of all notebooks in spite of variations in student expression. Processing the notebook exam took an estimated one-quarter of the time which would have been required by an experienced grader hy conventionalmethods. Even novice graders were able to function usefully, since the exam format took care of retrieving the pertinent information. As mentioned, opportunity for collaboration between students in lab was small. There was no cheating ~roblemon the exam, since only answers from the student's own notebook were acceptable. ~
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In the eradine aooroach described. thought must be given .. to the foilowing aspects. Students must i e thoroughiy informed about the plan. We employed an introductory lecture, written material, and an early self-graded self-test, all of which the students found useful (questionnaire result). There bhould he provision for lab workto be made up before the exam is given and for exceptional experiences to receive credit. I t is most important to be meticulous in collecting carbons on time and in checking them t o he sure a previous n,eek's observations are not heingnuhmitted along with new work. T o encourage and evaluate improvement, it would be better to give two or several notebookexams, we plan to do in future semesters. Acknowledgment
I would like to thank Francis Johnson, Frank W. Fowler, and Cynthia Burrows, all of whom have been interested and involved in testing the new grading methods in our course. Llterature Clted 11) Broam.T.L. J. C h r n . E d u . 1372.49.633. (2) Deal, W.A. J. ChomEduc. 1384,61,797. (3) Ei8enberg.A. I ICham. Edue. 1982.39,1045. (4) Kovacic. P. J. C h m . Educ 1378,55,791. ( 5 ) Piekering. M. J . C h m . Educ 1978,55,511. 161 Pickerine. M. J.Coll.Sci. Teoeh. 1382.11,210. (7) P~cLI&,M. J. Chem.Educ. 1984,61,861. (8) Pickering, M.; Crabtree, R. H.J. Chrm. Edue. 1373,56.487. (9) Pickering,M.:Goldstein,S. L. J. Chem.Educ. 1971.54.315. (10) Pickering, M.; MonU, D. L. ll Chem. Edue. 1382.59.794. i l l ) Rondioi.J.A.:Feirhen. J.A. J. ChemEdue. 1978,55,182.
