Development of a Uniform Approach to Writing and Grading of Laboratory Reports in Horticultural Science Courses

Abstract

Written scientific communication, such as laboratory reports, are important components of undergraduate educationwithin the sciences. Since most Horticultural Science majors offer lecture- and lab-based courses, students oftenwrite laboratory reports for many courses across the curriculum and these reports comprise a large percentage of thewriting assignments in these classes. Instructors link learning objectives with laboratory reports to reinforce coursecontent. Students have noted inconsistencies across horticulture courses in requirements for laboratory report writing,which often leads to confusion. Thus, development of a grading rubric would improve the continuity of expectationsof laboratory report writing and grading within a Horticultural Science curriculum for instructors teaching coursesrequiring laboratory reports.When focusing just on laboratory writing in the curriculum, surveys and interviews indicated that a disconnect existsbetween what instructors expect of their students and what the stated learning outcomes were for their courses.Student’s ability to analyze results was seen as both a strength and weakness, as reported from faculty responses. Inlower division courses, analyzing results from student’s experiments was a weakness while in upper division coursesfaculty responses were mixed as to whether students had the skills to sufficiently analyze results from theirexperiments.When a grading rubric was trialed, students indicated that use of the same rubric in other Horticultural Sciencecourses would demystify the process of conducting research and communicating it effectively in laboratory reports.For this work to expand, one or more standard rubrics need to be developed for use by Horticultural Science courseswithin an institution to enhance our students’ abilities to become competent writers in this form of scientificcommunication. A baseline rubric for courses at the 3000 level was developed to serve as a template to further thisprocess.