6 Benefits to Using Labflow Reports
Catalyst Education has a five-year history of helping science departments modernize their lab instruction into the 21st century using Labflow, our powerful learning platform, combined with our unrivaled scientist-led faculty support.
What makes our lab report functionality stand out? Check out our top 6 reasons below.
1. Guided Lab Report Structure
Labflow provides structure to the lab experience, allowing students to gather and interpret data confidently. The structure of a labflow report follows the order of the procedure, keeping students engaged, on track and on pace to finish the labs in a timely manner. All lab reports can be customized to fit your specific needs.
2. Multiple Choice, Auto-grading, and Open Response Options
Labflow allows for a combination of many question types to suit your unique laboratory and pedagogical needs. Labflow can tailor questions to be auto-graded to reduce the workload of the TAs. However, we carefully determine which questions should be auto-graded and which questions should be open responses. Numeric auto-grading gives the benefits of feedback on submission and detailed solutions after grading is complete. Dropdown auto-grading can help guide students in the direction of the correct conclusions/thought process. The ability to give multiple attempts transforms the lab report from a summative assessment to a formative assessment.
3. Timely Feedback on Data Collection
On a conventional introductory lab report, a student may collect unreasonable data or report their measurements incorrectly, either with the wrong units or the wrong degree of precision. This can lead to a lower grade without a significant learning event. Labflow can give students instant feedback as they enter their data, so that they learn how to correctly report their measurements. They then have the opportunity to correct their mistakes in the moment. Instead of docking points after the fact and diminishing confidence, Labflow gives students a more meaningful learning experience.
4. Designed by Chemists, Biologists and Educators
Whether we are adapting your reports to Labfllow or authoring post lab analysis questions (and feedback), you can be confident that we are writing the highest-quality educational content for students. Rather than adapting chemistry content for the web, we are chemistry educators with experience in technical design who build content from the ground up to be web native. We have designed thousands of lab reports for our platform, and our first priority is always the student experience.
5. Meaningful Student-TA Engagement Through Feedback
Feedback plays a significant role in laboratory learning, but it is impractical to expect TAs and instructors to provide specific feedback on every item for every student. Automatic grading with feedback from Labflow means graders do not need to be burdened with identifying and providing feedback on significant figures and calculation errors. This allows TAs and instructors to focus their time on providing higher quality feedback for open-ended questions. Students can engage with TAs in more meaningful ways when they are provided direct feedback and instruction through Labflow.
6. Data Collection and Insights
One of the crucial components of running a successful lab program is making sure your instructional proxies in the classroom are providing students with timely and fair assessments of their work. Getting this right is tricky, but we have developed a number of data views within Data Insights that we believe will help you get a better handle on how important aspects of your course are running.
Bonus: Overall Course Management and Support
Each course that uses Labflow is paired with a Faculty Success Manager, your one stop shop for support. Whether it’s as simple as setting due dates or an entire course redesign, our support team consists of scientists who are experienced curriculum designers and former lab educators so you can feel confident in the level of expertise and support you receive.