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Re: Physics lab and lecture grade



In all of our science courses the lab is integral and one grade is
given. A few pros and cons are given below. For the cons, I can
provide rationale that makes me believe the cons are not all that bad.

Pro...

- We like to discuss lab in lecture. I usually say something about lab,
and field some questions about lab, everyday.

- At one time when the discussion came up about separating the two, the
biology and science education profs wanted the lab to remain integral
with the calculus-based general physics. Also, the dietetics profs
wanted the lab to remain integral for organic chemistry. Why? Lab
helps the students pass the course. Struggling students generally have
a higher lab grade than lecture grade. There is a two-fold benefit (1)
the higher lab grade helps bring up the lower exam grade; (2) the exam
grade is probably higher than it would have been because the integral
lab helps students learn the lecture material.

Con...

- Some students fail the whole course because they failed the lab;
usually because they did not complete all the labs. When this happens
they repeat the whole course. This seems somewhat of a shame,
especially since they are paying tuition for more than they "need." But
students in this situation usually don't have stellar performance in the
lecture portion anyway, so repeating the lecture portion is not all that
bad.

- We have some students do well in lab, but not well enough to
counteract really bad exam scores. These students also repeat the whole
course. When this happens, I give the student the option of
resubmitting lab reports from the previous year if they got an A or B or
C. I find students generally repeat the lab if they got a B or C (or
worse) on that report the previous year, but keep the old grade for labs
for which they got an A. This is fine with me. I don't have any
problem excusing them from a lab and using last year's grade if they got
an A last year. (Of course I try to incorporate some new or modified
labs each year. If there is a new lab, the repeat student has to do
it.) I had a repeat student last spring. The previous year she was
really unpredictable (I think time-management problems) and had lab
grades ranging all the way from fail to A. I required her to repeat the
three labs where she got D and the one lab she failed. I would have
accepted her A, B, C lab reports from the previous year. But she
decided to repeat all the labs except for the one where she "really
nailed it" and got an A. She wanted to improve any lab grade that was
improvable, and also figured repeating the labs would help her lecture
grade. She still only got a C+ in the course, but that's a lot better
than the failure of the previous year, and she told me she felt good
about herself.

- When there is one lecture section with several lab sections it can
make it sticky to determine the teaching load, and it can also make it
sticky to set up the course schedule on the computer for registration.
We have a formula for load credit, and there are software ways to handle
the registration. However we have a few administrators who have never
been able to understand the formula. Fortunately our registrar is quite
good, and we have reasonable good software, so it all works out okay. I
can imagine that a dull registrar or lousy administrative software might
make it seem cleaner to separate the lab and lecture for scheduling
purposes and accounting purposes. But with competent staff I don't see
any reason this has to be the case.

Incidentally...
Even though a 4-hour lab course has three lectures, and a 5-hour lab
course has 4 lectures, we don't have to treat the lab as 25% or 20% in
these courses. In my 5-hour physics course I count the lab as 33% of
the overall course grade. I really stress lab both in terms of hands-on
experimentation and also in terms of data analysis and report writing.
I spend considerably more time working with students on the lab portion
(and grading lab reports) than I spend on the lecture portion.


Michael D. Edmiston, Ph.D.
Professor of Physics and Chemistry
Bluffton College
Bluffton, OH 45817
(419)-358-3270
edmiston@bluffton.edu