In the first semester of my PhD I was assigned demonstrating hours in the fourth year physics labs.  I had been a student in DIT Kevin Street and had experience with these labs and so the assistant head of the school felt I would be in a good position to take on this role. These labs are student driven with the demonstrators being as hands off as possible. It is much more of a facilitating role than a teaching role. The lab was run by 3 lecture-staff members and 4 postgraduates. Admittedly I was nervous at first, it was the second week in my new role as a postgraduate, I was finding my feet, and this was something I had never done before, but I was also looking forward to the challenge. Over time courses evolve and the big change in the design in these labs was that the students were required to submit their reports in the form of a scientific paper. This was the first time that these students were required to submit work for assessment in this style, until now their reports were a standard scientific report layout. The lab reports were due every 2 weeks. I was anxious about marking the reports, we received very vague guidelines and it was my first time assessing a report. When we received the first set of lab reports, all of the reports bar a select few were very poor.

 

It was my first time correcting lab reports and as we had no rubric to work with I felt like it may have been my approach to correcting; maybe I was being too harsh or the marks I has assigned per section were unbalanced. I had an excel sheet that calculated the marks per section in an attempt to be as fair as possible but I began to question this when the results were so poor. I sent the results to the lab co-ordinator who happened to also be the fourth year year-head and explained the issue I was having. He asked me to send on the feedback I had for the reports and the marking scheme. A meeting was scheduled for the following week and a Google drive folder was set up for each of us to submit our results and feedback. I looked through the other results and unfortunately the same issues were present across the board. I did however feel a slight relief that it was not just my reports that were poor quality. Before the meeting I decided to do some research and had a look through the online resources available for the students and stumbled across the sample paper that the group was basing their reports on. This report was a mock of Ohms Law and written in scientific paper format. While the style of writing was sufficient for a final year report the report itself was very poor. The biggest issue was there was no discussion section; this was a consistent issue with the reports I had corrected. Moreover, this was one of the heaviest weighted sections in my marking scheme, as discussing the findings of the experiment is paramount in understanding and contextualising the result.

 

I felt uncomfortable that the students were at a disadvantage, being a near-peer gave me an insight into how they must have been feeling. The final year for these students was taken into account for their degree award, none of the other years were considered. The fact that they hadn’t written a report in this style before not to mention this was a poor representation of a scientific paper really was a disadvantage. I spoke with some of the students and asked them what guidance they were given. They all referred to the paper that was available online. While I was under no illusions that this was probably not the first scientific paper the students had read I still felt it was unfair and it was a disadvantage if they based their reports on this paper. I was very conscious that I was a new member of the faculty and I did not want to start off my relationship with the lectures in a negative way but I felt that I had to share what I had found.

 

In the meeting the lab coordinator went through a marking scheme and what we were expected to do for feedback. When the topic of the lab report results was addressed I brought up the example paper and explained that in the reports I graded this was definitely a deterministic factor as to why the results were so poor. While the general consensus was that the results were poor the lecturers had previous experience with this class group and explained they were not the hardest working or most consistent group, and that there had been issues in third year in relation to labs and late submissions. The coordinator and another lecturer had received complaints about the labs and I had also received complaints about the labs and questions about my marking scheme. As a group the lecturers and the post graduates felt that the students deserved another chance and they were allowed to resubmit their first report, taking on board the feedback they had received, by the end of the first semester.

 

Looking back at this incident with the information I now have about assessments I realise that there were a number of issues. While I understand that writing scientific papers is crucial for a career in science it was possibly an ambitious idea to implement this without a tutorial or scientific/academic writing module, especially in final year labs where the results are included in the final degree award. I found that in the duration of the remaining lab sessions the students responded very well to me when I gave them the marking scheme that I used; knowing how the marks were distributed really gave their reports structure. There was a marked improvement in the results and the students felt they were back on a level playing field. The sample paper was not fit for purpose, if anything it was an example of what a scientific paper should not be. In fact, if I could go back and change one thing from this incident it would be to turn this negative into a positive, and advise the students to assess this report themselves as an exercise to actively learn how to write an acceptable paper. I would also like to have asked for more guidance in marking the reports and giving feedback. I have only become familiar with a rubric in the pedagogy module. Having a set of guidelines or instructions as to what makes a good report or a bad report is critical in establishing a systematic approach to grading. It also eliminates bias to some degree. I think it is the fairest way to assess a report, once it is designed specifically for the relevant assessment. A general rubric will undermine the grading scheme as it becomes subjective and the guidelines can be interpreted in a number of ways.

 

What I have learnt from this incident, and more importantly, how I will approach a situation like this in the future is with more preparation. I will make sure that I know what standard the students are working towards before I pick up a red pen to mark anything. While students are responsible for the quality of their work any guidance or examples they are provided should be relevant. Furthermore, I understand the importance of consistency with assessments and I will be sure to ask for further guidance and clarity where I feel things are not quite transparent for assessments. Finally, after the intial meeting and subsequent emails to follow up on the logistics of the re-submit, only 50% of the students availed of this offer. This reminded me of the classic conundrum - you can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink!!!