Summary: Assessment of experimentation-focused labs should always align with student learning objectives for that lab. For experimentation-focused lab assessment, your goal is to evaluate the quality.
WAYS TO ASSESS STUDENTS’ LEARNING OF EXPERIMENTATION SKILLS AND GIVE STUDENTS FEEDBACK
Students benefit from instructor feedback that helps them improve their learning of experimentation skills.
Rubrics You can use a course grading rubric to assign a rough number, but then actually make comments and give feedback on the lab notes. The feedback on the lab notes is a lot more like responding to a draft of a paper than grading a problem set, e.g., Did you take this data into account in your claim? Your code is confusing, does it produce reliable results?
Holistic lab notes grading Giving feedback on the lab notes is really interesting intellectual work. You have to dive into what each group is doing to respond to students' lab notes. It takes about 20 minutes for each lab notebook. Grading the lab notes in the can make students focus more on their note-taking ability, not the process of the experiment. Students are responsible to respond to the feedback in the multi-week labs. My comments are right on their lab notes. It's the structure of having a lab that lasts 2-3 weeks. Authentically nudge students to look at feedback. Its often up to the facilitator/TA to encourage students to look at the feedback.
Verbal checkouts with TAs Cornell moved to each lab group doing a verbal checkout with a TA. In these checkouts, the whole group explains to the TA their experimental process, their evidence, and the resulting claim. These verbal checkouts emphasize the process of the lab, not their ability to take notes.
Presentations Students can also do a mini poster presentation in lab, where they make a single slide that discusses their experimental process, evidence and claims. Half the class can view the slides of the other half of the class, and then switch.
ASSESSMENTS FOR ASSESSING YOUR LAB (NOT YOUR STUDENTS)
These assessment are meant to give you overall feedback on how changes to your teaching are impacting your students. For these assessments, you look at the average results for your entire class, and look for improvement over time. These assessments are not for grading your students.
Colorado Learning Attitudes about Science Survey for Experimental Physics (E-CLASS)
Survey of Physics Reasoning on Uncertainty Concepts in Experiments (SPRUCE)
Modeling Assessment for Physics Laboratory Experiments (MAPLE)
