In our final meeting for Spring 2020 on June 2, we discussed how to create and grade effective lab reports for online labs. The following ideas were shared.
- Many different formats can work for online lab reports: a word document emailed or submitted on blackboard, a screenshot of a completed online simulation, etc.
- Lab reports should help students practice specific learning outcomes
- The outcomes students should master ought to be explicit, so that students can easily see why they are assigned to complete specific activities.
- The instructions and expectations for lab reports should be clear to students.
- Rubrics, which can be created and re-used in Blackboard, can be an excellent tool both for communicating expectations and for providing clear guidelines for grading. They also make grading more efficient (i.e., faster). A short demonstration ensued on how to create a rubric in blackboard, and how to use it for grading.
- The demo for Blackboard rubrics led to participants sharing other Blackboard tips for the remainder of the meeting
- Effective use of discussion boards
- Creating exams and online exam protocols
- Creating question pools
- Using grade center effectively