LabWrite: A National Web-Based Initiative to Use the Lab Report to Improve the Way Students Write, Visualize, and Understand Science

在美国，每年有数十万的学生和教职员工投入到本科科学实验室报告中，这一工作反映并延续了许多在科学教育中发现的缺点，如NRC的1999年在SMET中转变本科教育。由于开发和传播成本相对较小，我们的项目团队（来自科学传播，科学可视化，植物学，化学和物理学）正试图利用这种无处不在的活动来改善学生写作，可视化和理解科学的方式。我们的第一个目标是修订和传播我们的在线原型供全国使用，该原型是通过我们在2000- 2001年为期一年的NSF-CCLI赠款开发、试验和评估的。LabWrite是一系列教学和教师发展模块，鼓励和加强实验室报告的使用，使学生和教师可以利用它提供的机会来发展和扩大学生的科学素养。我们的第二个目标是建立一个教学基础设施，以改善全国实验室的教学和学习经验。材料和教师研讨会正在北卡罗来纳州和一所小型文科女子学院、一所历史悠久的黑人大学、一所社区学院和一所大型综合大学的物理、化学和生物课程中进行试点。一旦经过全面测试和修订，我们预计将出版LabWrite作为科学教科书的补充，以及各种实验室课程的综合互动包。

Hundreds of thousands of student and faculty hours are devoted annually in the U.S. to the undergraduate science lab report, an exercise reflecting and perpetuating many of the shortcomings in science education identified in such reports as the NRC's 1999 Transforming Undergraduate Education in SMET. With comparatively small development and dissemination costs, our project team (from science communication, scientific visualization, botany, chemistry, and physics) is attempting to harness this ubiquitous activity to improve the way students write, visualize, and understand science. Our first goal is to revise and disseminate for national use our online prototype, developed, piloted, and assessed through our one-year NSF-CCLI grant in 2000-01. LabWrite, a series of instructional and faculty development modules, encourages and enhances use of the lab report so that students and instructors can take advantage of the opportunities it offers to develop and expand students' scientific literacy. Our second goal is to build an instructional infrastructure for improving the teaching and learning experience of the laboratory nationwide. Materials and faculty workshops are being piloted within physics, chemistry, and biology courses at NC State and at a small liberal arts women's college, a historically black university, a community college, and a large, comprehensive university. Once fully tested and revised, we anticipate publishing LabWrite as a supplement to science textbooks as well as a comprehensive interactive package for a variety of lab classes.