Rubrics and Points to Consider

[robert zellmer]

I've seen some of the reports for exp 1 and people didn't address
everything they should have in the discussion section.

The Points to Consider in the manual are there to help you with what you
should address at a minimum in your Discussion and Conclusion sections
of the report (mainly the discussion section since the conclusion is 
more or
less a summary of what was in the discussion section).  They may not always
be listed as such in the rubric but you should be addressing these things.
There are questions in the PtoC to guide you in your thinking and what you
should be addressing.  These are not separate questions to be answered
elsewhere.  Use them as a guide as to what should be in the Discussion
section, at a minimum.  Your specific data may require you to think about
other things not directly addressed in the PtoC. Not everything in the PtoC
are word for word in the rubric due to space considerations.  That's what
"clearly states/summarizes results", "Explanation of observations/trends",
"are results reasonable", etc. in the rubric mean.  There are times the
Discussion/Conclusion sections in the rubric are grouped together. You
still need both sections in the report and they follow the same general
format as in my example.  A Discussion should always include your most
important results, written out, not simply referred to in a table.

Don't forget, my "example" report shows what should be in the Discussion
section, there's a discussion of the report in Appendix B of the manual and
there's an example at the web site for the pre-labs and data-entry.

Finally, when you look at the Modules on Carmen for the lab report it tells
you what things have to be done for the exp.  There's also a PDF form of
the rubric.  I suggest looking at this since it is easier to determine 
what's
required (what sample calcs, graphs, etc.) from that rather than the grading
rubric.

Dr. Zellmer