Introduction

At Simon Fraser University (SFU) recent university-wide curriculum revisions require all undergraduate students to take two courses designated as writing-intensive. The goals of this initiative were twofold. Firstly, students would “write to learn in the forms typical of the discipline,” that is these courses should use examples, styles, and technical language that are representative of the specific subject. Secondly, feedback and response to students’ written work would be provided, aimed at improving the overall quality of writing [1, 2].

Although most chemistry undergraduate curricula are focused on teaching the theory and facts of the field, the use of writing as a learning and communication tool is entering the chemistry curriculum [3–9]. Writing, which is traditionally viewed as an evaluation tool, is increasingly being valued as an active learning technique to engage students and to stimulate discussions [7]. Chemistry programs are increasingly implementing writing components into their courses, in order to teach effective writing styles [10, 11].

This paper will focus on the techniques used to introduce writing as a learning tool and overcome challenges in improving the writing proficiency of students, all in the context of a second-year inorganic laboratory course.

Methodology

To meet the new undergraduate curriculum requirements at SFU, the Department of Chemistry recently altered a required second-year inorganic chemistry laboratory course to provide specific instruction in scientific writing. The weekly 4-h laboratory sessions remain, in the traditional way, the time for students to receive hands on experience with basic inorganic chemistry concepts and laboratory techniques. With the addition of weekly 1-h tutorials, detailed instruction could focus on the various aspects of writing typically associated with a laboratory science. Attendance at both the laboratory and tutorial sessions is mandatory.

The writing component of the laboratory course focuses on three types of written assignments: (1) keeping a research style laboratory notebook, (2) completing laboratory report sheets, and (3) writing formal laboratory reports. During the tutorials a variety of instructional methodology is used to establish the standard format and style for each type of assignment. This is done through the use of specific guidelines as well as discussion and analysis of examples taken from various sources; for example, research or technical journal articles, instructor composed examples, or other students’ work. “Audience,” an important concept in writing, is discussed for each type of assignment and students are encouraged to identify their audience to assist them in determining the level of detail required in their writing [12, 13].

Each assignment type is deconstructed to its basic components and each individual component discussed for its purpose, content, and style. Low stakes writing exercises are employed to provide practice for each of the components with opportunity for instructor feedback or peer review. By starting with the components of the laboratory notebook followed by those of the reports sheets and finally the formal laboratory reports, students progress toward more complex writing styles that require an increase in the understanding of the subject matter.

The Laboratory Notebook

In the first tutorial students are introduced to the importance of keeping a proper research style laboratory notebook as proof of scientific discovery [14]. This is stressed by using examples from the literature that detail instances where published articles have been retracted due to poor or nonexistent laboratory notebooks [15, 16], and with a sample of an advertisement for an industrial research position that specifies “maintaining a laboratory notebook” as part of the job description [17].

For all experimental work, students are required to accurately and clearly record their procedures, observations, data, and results in their laboratory notebook on an ongoing basis while in the laboratory. To assist the students with the task of properly completing their notebooks, the audience has been identified as (1) themselves, as they will need the information in the notebook when writing up report sheets or formal reports and (2) other students with similar chemistry background who may want to repeat the experiment.

The basic components of the notebook were identified as: Date, Title, Objective, Data Tables, Equations and Calculations, and Procedure and Observations. Time is spent examining each component. For example, students are taught that the laboratory notebook represents what they did and what they observed while in the laboratory and therefore the Procedure and Observations section is to be written while they are doing the experiment, not before, and should be in the past tense. With respect to audience, as outlined above, entries are to include enough detail for a student of similar chemistry background to repeat the experiment based on the laboratory notes.

Students are also required to complete some aspects of the notebook before coming to the laboratory session, including the Title, Date, and Objective of the experiment. For each experiment a Data Table is to be prepared, and should include the names and pertinent physical data for all the reagents and solvents to be used in the experiment. Notebooks are regarded as low-stakes writing. They are checked by a Teaching Assistant (TA) at the beginning of each laboratory session and again at the end to eval-uate for completeness and to give feedback. No marks are assigned in the first 3 or 4 weeks of the course, giving students the opportunity to improve based on the feedback they received. After that, the weekly laboratory notes are marked for completeness.

The Laboratory Report Sheet

Prior to writing formal laboratory reports, students complete a laboratory report sheet for the early experiments. These are essentially template style laboratory reports that require the student to report specific data and results, and answer specific questions about the experiment. The report sheets can be used to build up toward the formal laboratory report as they essentially guide students, with direct questions, to the important aspects of the experiment that are worthy of discussion and, ultimately, to an understanding of the chemical concepts. Report sheets are considered high-stakes writing assignments. They are due 1–2 weeks after completion of the laboratory and are worth a significant portion of the final grade.

The Formal Laboratory Report

Formal laboratory reports are an effective communication and learning tool for both the students and the target audience. They provide a means for students to present their work as a polished and complete unit, which therefore requires them to further explore the experiment and gain an in-depth understanding of the chemistry involved. Unlike the guided question/answer format of the report sheets, formal reports are more open-ended and students must consider for themselves what aspects of the chemistry are important to discuss. Students are expected to use the previous assignments as guidelines to compile the contents required in a formal laboratory report. To aid in determining the level of detail required in a formal laboratory report, we identified the audience to be someone with a firm understanding of the fundamentals of basic chemistry but not the particulars of the reaction being reported.

In the tutorial, a scientific paper is deconstructed into its components (Introduction, Experimental, Results and Discussion, Conclusions, References and Abstract). Each component is examined and decoded to identify the key elements and features that are typically included. For example, when writing an Introduction to a scientific paper, we recommend the students address the following questions: (1) What has been done before? (2) Why are we doing this experiment? (3) What are we going to do? (4) How are we going to do it?

Low stakes, quick writes are used for additional practice in writing the various components of a formal report. Students might be asked to take their laboratory notes from an experiment and re-write them as an Experimental section for a formal report or to write a Conclusion for a previously completed laboratory. This work is assessed in peer review groups and fellow students provide each other with constructive feedback. Higher stakes writing exercises are also assigned, to be handed in at the next tutorial and subsequently graded by the TA or instructor.

Once the students have progressed through all the components of a scientific paper in the tutorial setting, the initial report sheet assignments in the laboratory are replaced with the higher stakes formal laboratory reports. Three formal laboratory reports are required in the course. For the first one the students are given considerable guidelines and suggestions as to what should be included in the discussion. The amount of guidance is reduced for the second formal report and for the third one it is left entirely for the individual student to decide what should be included.

The first formal laboratory report is evaluated both for the writing and the chemistry contents but the writing portion of the grade is not recorded. Each student is given a detailed feedback form describing what was done correctly and where they need improvement (Table 1). This feedback form is provided to students as a guide for improving subsequent formal reports. The writing aspect of the later formal laboratory reports do contribute to the final grade.

Table 1 Formal Report Feedback Sheet
Full size table

Other Writing Assignments

In addition to the three main types of assignments detailed above, a variety of other assignments have been used to enhance the “writing to learn” experience. Various examples of safety data sheets were examined in tutorial and students were then assigned the task of compiling their own safety data sheet for a specific chemical. One tutorial is dedicated to reference material: how to search for information, how to properly reference the literature, identifying, and avoiding plagiarism. Students were given a journal article with citations removed, and were asked to identify places where they felt a reference was required.

Results and Discussion

Several challenges were encountered in introducing the writing-intensive component into a laboratory course. It was clear early on that trying to give writing instruction in the laboratory setting did not work. There were too many distractions and students were always keen to get on with the experimental work. It was important to have separate classroom time, so the addition of the tutorial hour was critical. Pre-course surveys indicated that many students were skeptical about “learning to write” in chemistry. Some initially felt that “writing intensive” meant a lot more work writing and less time spent on chemistry. They did not have a lot of confidence in their ability to write and some gave that as a reason they were taking science courses, not arts courses. In addition, a significant proportion of our students have English as a second language; their writing skills are often very weak.

Although the writing intensive aspects that we have adopted for our laboratory course focus on “learning to write in the discipline” to promote effective communication of scientific discovery, we believe we have done this in the greater context of using writing as a tool to learn chemistry. When keeping a laboratory notebook the student must determine what information is important to include, and what is unnecessary detail. This requires an understanding and appreciation of the techniques being used and the chemistry observed. They must read and understand background chemistry on the topic in order to summarize and write an effective introduction. The discussion section of a formal report will require an in-depth understanding of the chemical concepts in order to discuss the significance of the experimental results.

In a writing intensive course, students receive appropriate feedback on their work, directed to improving the quality of writing. This often involves several drafts and revisions of each assignment. Since the writing assignments for the laboratory course must coordinate with the experimental work being done, multiple revisions of any one assignment are not done. Instead we chose to use a progression of assignments where the feedback from an assignment based on one experiment, is used to improve upon the writing for a similar assignment based on the next experiment. As the students work through their seven or eight different experiments in the laboratory they have multiple opportunities for writing and feedback for each type of assignment that we have detailed above. The nature of the feedback varies depending on the complexity of the writing assignment. Quick notations and verbal feedback are used for the laboratory notebooks and peer review is used to evaluate the quick write in tutorials. The report sheets receive in-depth feedback on the style and the appropriateness of the audience, with the formal laboratory reports receiving a more structured, high stakes feedback in the form of a detailed feedback sheet (see Table 1). As the requirements and demands of the format increase the students receive more complete feedback from the instructor and teaching assistants.

Our second year laboratory course has now been offered five times in this new writing-intensive format. Each time we have noted a general improvement in the quality of student writing as the semester progressed, as seen in the marks assigned to written work. There were students whose writing immediately improved while others did so more slowly. A few students remained “stuck” on previously adopted writing styles from other disciplines and did not feel that they needed to make adjustments. Several former students have commented that the writing instruction they received in our course was a definite help to them in other laboratory courses that required written work. This is reflected in the experience of instructors in third and fourth year laboratory courses as well, who have noticed an improvement in the written work submitted by their students.

At this point we have not been able to correlate whether the focus on writing in a chemistry laboratory course has led directly to an improvement in the understanding of the chemical concepts. We hope to be able to track such improvements over the next several semesters that the course is offered.

Conclusion

A required second year inorganic chemistry laboratory course was recently altered to include a writing-intensive component. It was designed to improve the writing abilities of our students in the Department of Chemistry. Although, students initially have reservations of the importance of this program, the quality of writing by our students within the department has shown signs of improvement. As we develop the program and tailor the lessons to maximize the learning outcome, our initial goals will be further met. Although instructors have noticed improvement, the overall influence of this course on students’ ability to better understand and learn chemical concepts is to be determined in years to come.