Positive:

+ There were some real student success stories that would not have happened in the usual laboratory sequence. I felt like all of the student groups really made and effort to put together a quality lab.

+ Whether or not students completely understood the experiments they were developing, they did have an opportunity to think of laboratory from the perspective of the “creator” and/or “producer” as well as “consumer.”

+ I think that this was a meaningful group project. I think that, as a group, students were able to accomplish things that they would not have been able to do individually.

 

Neutral Commentary:

±Analysis of products tended to extend the time required to complete the lab reports because it took time to collect and distribute all of the data.

±Lab development is rather time consuming to do it right. Mistakes were made because not everything was thoroughly checked through before the lab handout went into press.

±There was still a pretty big element of instructor control. I wanted to be sure that the labs were comparable to each other and comparable to labs they would normally be doing.

 

Negative:

- I was surprised that there was not more “ownership” of the experiment by the group who was producing the lab the day that it was being performed by their peers. I will try to increase the involvement of the group who developed the lab next time.

- There was a little more difficultly in synching labs with course content.

- I need more skill if I am going to follow the “draft” method of evaluating student work. Students tend to view resubmitting drafts as simply correcting the specific errors that the instructor pointed out. I need to write a more detailed rubric for both the lab handouts and webpages. Maybe a better way to gauge participation of each member of the group too.