STANDARD OPERATING PROCEDURE
FOR LAB NOTEBOOK ENTRIES
Background
Laboratory notebooks are one of the main professional products that biological scientists use on a daily basis, and thus it is important that you learn to use your laboratory notebook in the appropriate manner.
Throughout this course, you will be conducting numerous laboratory activities that you will be responsible for recording within you laboratory notebook. In general, as an instructor, I don’t assign work in the laboratory notebook per se. If we happen to be conducting an activity, it is instead my expectation that you will be recording your progress using the directions provided. Similarly, you will often have time during class to spend working on your notebookwhile conducting a laboratory activity. So, I would use your time wisely instead of wasting it and having to complete more work at home.
Assignment
These are the basic steps that you need to proceed through in preparing a quality activity entry in your laboratory notebook. Lab notebooks are traditionally turned in on Friday’s for weekend grading.
- Project Title – Determine and record a project title for the activity/experiment, etc… that you are conducting. This title should be brief and meaningful. Often you can use wording that I use to refer to the assignment.
- Background – Some of the laboratory activities that will do will come with a manual providing an introduction and/or background information. Some will not. In either event, you should think carefully about the laboratory activity, its objectives and goals, and discern the most important basic content information that it important understanding before the laboratory activity is completed. It is your job to teach yourself this background and demonstrate your understanding through composing and recording an organized background section summarizing important content written in appropriate paragraph form. This section should begin with a heading so that the instructor can readily discern its location for grading purposed. This section may be as short a single paragraph composed of a few sentences to as much as a number of paragraphs. The background section should include a statement of the problem and/or hypothesis if the activity is experimental in nature.
- Procedure – This section is a detailed recording of the steps taken to conduct the laboratory activity. Although it will likely be composed of a numerical listing of steps, it is important to supplement the steps with short descriptive explanations of what the steps will accomplish before each listing. This section should begin with a heading as well. The individual steps should most often be written as complete sentences. If we are using a procedure from another source, you are required to hand record the procedure in your laboratory notebook, and make any modifications as they are made. It might be helpful in some case accompany the procedure with graphics that outline the steps (flow chart) or share the particular use of some interesting apparatus that was used.
- Results – This section is where you record your qualitative and quantitative observations. You should present your raw data collected in an organized manner, making sure to provide a caption for any table, graph, or diagram. It is important that you when recording results that you pay attention to things that you weren’t originally planning on observing either, and record those things as well. Science often progresses when individuals make note of such seemingly insignificant things. Besides recording your raw data, it may also be important to calculate and record descriptive statistics as well (mean, median, mode, range, standard deviation, etc…), and in some instances we may share with you manners of calculating inferential statistics (t-test, Chi-square, etc…) to determine statistical significance. Your result should also include a written summary that include a description of any major trends in the data, etc… Do NOT make any conclusions about what the data means in this section. This section should include a distinct heading as well.
- Conclusions – This section is where you record your conclusions. What did you learn? What does the data you collected tell you? Does the data support your hypothesis? Why or why not? You should present you conclusions in an organized manner, and you should refer to specific results to make your conclusions. In the event that your results do not appear to support your hypothesis, it is important that you still make conclusions based on the data. Maybe the data is telling you a different story than you expected. Similarly, if you know any sources of error, human or otherwise, that could have led to the results observed, it is important that you document those errors and explain how they could have led to the results that you observed. As you organize your conclusions, it is important to reflect on the background content, goals/objectives, and hypothesis, and address those things that you brought up at that time. This section should include a distinct heading as well.
- Other Items – The laboratory notebook has other feature that need to be maintained as well. They include, a Table of Content, and as you complete entries it is important for you to Sign and Date the entry on the bottom left-hand corner of the page. Image can be taped into the notebook using scotch tape, and should be done in an organized manner.
Lab entries are graded on a 10 point scale and make up a portion of the class work grade.