WRITING ASSIGNMENTS
A goal of BISC 207 is to teach proper scientific writing. Although this varies among scientific journals, we will be rather conservative in our approach. You will be given (or will have access to) rubrics to guide you in your writing; the same rubrics will be used by TA's to grade reports. Three brief and four longer reports will be required. Brief reports will simply be a presentation of the data. Raw data should be summarized and charted, showing trends, etc (guidelines will be found in the worksheet on Chart and Table construction); however, raw data should not be included in these brief reports, unless you are told otherwise.  The longer reports will include a brief Introduction including a hypothesis (more than one hypothesis is permitted) and brief justification for the hypothesis, a Results section, including both verbal and appropriate visual depictions of results, and Discussion, which includes an interpretation of results, their relevance to science, error sources and ideas for further investigations. The rubrics and worksheets should help you in writing both the brief and long reports. They include "Chart & Table Construction" ,  "Writing Conventions", and rubrics for the brief and extended reports.  Due dates for lab assignments can be found here.

LAB EXAM
A final exam will be given at the last lab meeting. Some of it will be written and some may be in "practical" form - this means that you will be responsible for understanding and demonstrating procedures, interpreting results that are given to you, and understanding the theory behind each lab. This should be an incentive for everyone to participate fully in all aspects of each lab, because the lab exam will be taken as individuals, not as groups. For example, even if someone else was in charge of monitoring data collection on the computer, each of you will have to be able to read raw data from the computer program. So although you may be tempted to divide up chores in lab, you will be responsible for all them for the lab exam. This exam will include all labs that you did, even if you did not write a report for a lab.

FLOW CHARTS

Flow charts (work plans) are summaries of procedures that must be following during a lab. Writing a flow chart should enable you to execute lab protocols efficiently without having to constantly consult the lab manual. They should be detailed enough for you to glance at them and know what to do, but not so detailed that they are as cumbersome as the lab manual. Writing a flow chart will ensure that you enter lab well prepared for that day's experiment. You should make two copies of each flow chart - one for you to use in lab, and one to hand in as soon as you arrive in lab (this one will be checked and graded).

QUIZZES

A quiz will consist of approximately 10 questions, most of which will cover the protocol or theory behind that day's lab. There may be a few questions about the previous lab also.

SHARING LAB DATA
Each group of two or three people at a work station will collect data together. These data will be shared among group members, and occasionally data may be shared among all class members. You may not bring in memory sticks or CD's for use in the laboratory desktop computers. Therefore data must either be shared before you leave lab, or may be stored on WebCT. Your lab instructor will explain how you can share data. Although you will share data with your group, each student is responsible for writing his/her own lab report. This includes constructing charts and/or tables. With the exception of what you might do in laboratory as a group, you are not to work on chart or table construction as a group when doing your lab reports. You need to learn how to do these independently.

ATTENDANCE
Laboratory attendance is mandatory. The only excuses for which you may miss your lab are: Documented illness, documented family tragedy, and attendance at a UD-sponsored event for which you are an official representative (letter from your group's coach/advisor is required for this). In each of these cases, you must still make up the lab at a different time in the same week (there are no labs on Friday, so a make-up must be scheduled Monday through Thursday). The first step is to notify Prof. Dion as soon as you know about the need for absence. An absence and make-up cannot be arranged on an impromptu basis by going to a different lab and making a request of that TA. Other emergencies are not grounds for missing a lab, but will be considered on a case-by-case basis.