Hearing the Students

It has been a repeating question of mine of how to better connect the laboratory experience with the textbook/concept learning. It seems that students just don't want to take the time necessary to truly analyze their lab work. Simply reviewing the experimentation has not seemed to make a difference.
Reflections have always been part of my classes and I read each one looking for understandings and confusions. Reflections get the grade of "did it honestly", or didn't do it. This year I have been using the IWB to have students post their lab data collectively. This is different to the old chalkboard method because I can set up a table ahead of time, save the results for each class, and quickly pull it up whenever the assignment is discussed. In reading student reflections I have learned how much they value having class data collected. It appears that students will follow review discussions more closely when their own data is used as part of the review.  Conclusion: Keep collecting student data and use it more frequently during concept reviews.

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