“A lab notebook stands written sentry
Over data advanced, element’ry.
When the record is clear,
Future readers adhere,
To repeat work outlined in past entries.”
Revisiting the 30 September 2019 Twitter limerick through the lens of the STEM education-themed poems provides an opportunity to emphasize the lab notebook as an educational tool.
“A lab notebook stands written sentry /
Over data advanced, element’ry.”
Keeping a clear record of experimental data in a lab notebook is a learning objective in most undergraduate laboratories, from first-year introductory chemistry courses through upper-level majors’ courses. These notebooks thus stand guard over data ranging from elementary to advanced.
“When the record is clear, /
Future readers adhere, /
To repeat work outlined in past entries.”
Writing a lab notebook entry is a task for which there is no single “correct” approach. However, a complete entry typically includes the following: a statement of purpose; information on amounts of reagents used and the procedures completed; the data collected; at least one sample calculation for each result; and a brief conclusion statement. Data should be recorded in ink, and errors should be crossed out only with a single line apiece, so that the entire procedural record can be observed and understood. I generally remind my students to write at a level of detail enabling a “future reader” (another chemist) to pick up the notebook and repeat the entire procedure from the “past entr[y].”
Since beginning my teaching work, I have been interested in revisiting lab notebook assignments as writing-to-learn techniques. I have asked students to turn in scanned pages from their first experiment for comments only: a “low-stakes” formative assessment, long before the lab notebook is graded at the close of the semester for a significant portion of the grade, in the traditional, “high-stakes” summative assessment. More recently, I have been interested to learn further about writing across the curriculum initiatives in STEM. Writing and learning in chemistry are both iterative processes that can reinforce one another.
Chemphasis 