Lab Report Analysis
A lab report is a way to explain your hypothesis with data that you acquired from experiments. It is an organized way to show others your results without any confusion. It is easy to follow since there are multiple sections that exist in a lab report. To be clear, there are eight main sections in a lab report to fully explain the author’s thought and process. I have gathered two lab reports to compare each section. I will be examining the order of each lab report as well as explaining my thoughts on why the author chose to have it like the way he/she has it.
To begin with, the title is something that everyone reads first. In a lab report, you must have a detailed title that tells the reader what to expect as well as their idea. This is to save time so the reader doesn’t read halfway and then decide not to read it anymore because it’s the opposite of his claim. For instance, in the lab report “Application of Blended Learning for Formation of Project Competence of Future Engineers” by Galustyan (2019) et la. has a great title since I know what to expect and I know what they’re trying to prove. This title means that blended learning is a good way to learn and can help future engineers with their projects. When I read the full lab report, it was exactly what I expected. The same goes for the other lab report title, “Motivating Females Students for Computer Science by Means of Robot Workshops” by Keller and John (2019). You can clearly tell in this lab report before even reading the abstract or even the title what this paper is about. From the title, we can tell it is about trying to motivate female students to like computer science. As you can see, titles are very important in a lab report. You want to explain to the reader your claim as well as what your whole paper is about in a few words and that will be your title. In both papers, the authors made a well-structured title because throughout the paper it was only talking about the title with more details and evidence to back up their claim. Also, you want to make the title interesting so you can get someone hooked on your paper just from the title.
An abstract is similar to the introduction and conclusion, but what separates it from those two is that it summarizes the whole paper and gives the purpose as well as findings of the experiment. This will give the reader enough information for them to determine if they want to keep on reading it is like a recap of everything in the lab but in a few sentences. We can see a great example in the lab report by Keller and John (2019). From the first sentence, we already know what this paper focuses on as it states “…this work aims to provide possible STEM education initiatives from middle to high school students” (Keller and John, 2019). Throughout the whole lab report this was the central idea of the paper, this is the goal. This abstract also informed us about the results as Keller and John (2019) wrote “All participating schools showed high interest in both types of initiatives and further cooperation”. The authors informed us that the goal of this lab report was to show what will help motivate women to become engineers. They did this by doing experiments to prove what will work to motivate women. The authors also provided results that give the reader more than enough information for them to know what to expect and whether to keep on reading. Similarly, the lab report by Galustyan (2019) et la. also had a similar abstract structure where the first sentence explains the issue or the goal of this paper and the last sentence tells the reader the findings.
Followed by the abstract, the introduction is a section where you introduce your idea and give the reader background information on the topic. You want to explain why it is important to address the problem and explain the purpose of the experiment. The lab report by Keller and John (2019) is an excellent demonstration of what a good introduction looks like. This introduction follows the structure of the format shown in this chapter. Right away, it starts off “Women belong to a minority in computer science” (Keller and John, 2019). It tells the reader what the authors point of view which helps the reader know where this is going. This introduction also states research from other places and their results but they Keller and John included “his work is also targeting to improve the success rate of women robotics projects by analyzing the needs of the target group through requirements elicitation, which was not undertaken by previous studies in this form”. By including this, it shows the importance of this research as well as why this is a better research. As shown in this chapter, you want to include what makes your research stand out from other research to keep the reader interested. The lab report by Galustyan (2019) et la. is a bit different than the introduction of the other lab report since it did not include why their research is different from the other research. However, this lab report gave better background information and explained what the needs are for modern engineering. It explains things that some readers might not know, for instance, “Modernization of engineering educational process involves introduction and development of project skills of future engineers. The task of future engineers is to develop competencies and skills which enable them to implement integrated projects and initiatives” (Galustyan (2019) et la.). This bit of information of the difference between the needs of a modern engineer and future engineer will help the reader know what the author is trying to prove. Some people might not know what skills are needed for future engineers, so this helped clear the reader’s confusion.
The next part of a lab report is called Materials and Methods which purpose is to explain the process of your experiment. You want to make it as detailed as possible so that others can perform the experiment. Also, adding what you used for instance, human subjects as well as their age and any other materials you used is important since you don’t want your reader to ask any questions. In the lab report by Keller and John (2019), they explained who the human subject was by stating their gender and their age, for example, “a mixed methods study was performed with female students aged 12 to 16” (Keller and john, 2019). Without giving the reader this information, it will leave them confused and if someone wants to perform this experiment, they would not be able to get similar results because they don’t know the age and gender of the group. In the lab report by Galustyan (2019) et la, it was a bit different because in this paper it had more parts within the section, material and methods. For the most part it was similar to the other lab report since it stated it was using human subjects as well as their age group, but it did not include the gender so I’m assuming it is mixed between boys and girls because throughout the paper, the author always referred to the people as students in general. so, assuming it’s mixed between boys and girls is a good assumption based on how the author described the people throughout the paper. In this lab report unlike the other one, it includes how many participants were used and where it was conducted and year for example, “We conducted our experiment at Southern Federal University (Rostov-on-Don) and State University named after A.N. Kosygin (Moscow) in 2018–2019” (Galustyan et la, 2019). I think this lab report had more details than the other one making it more believable and seems like it is a reliable source. Moving on, in the lab report by Galustyan (2019) et la. had more categories in this part of the lab report. In this experiment the author wants to know which is better, project learning or blended learning. For each part, the author stated the advantages and more gave more information about each learning type. The information they gave was from other sources before they went on about their experiment as the author included “Scientists [10, 18, 27] consider that application of blended learning information of project competence of future engineers allows it to form”. I think the author did this to compare their findings with other sources so that the reader can believe in their work.
Results is something the reader would like to know the most. After all the explaining and background information, the reader got curious and has the urge to know the final results. In this section, the author will tell the reader their findings. Mostly you would use graphs or statistics that answers any of the questions and hypotheses that were introduced in the introduction. With the results, you want to explain your findings by tying back to your claim as a piece of evidence. In the lab report by Keller and John (2019), they used images, pie charts, and graphs to show their findings. This is a great way to show the reader what exactly was the results and is easy to read. The way the author presented the results was well organized and the way they explained the charts was helpful to the reader because it explained the meaning of the charts. Also, when they explained the results, they used percentages from the figure itself for instance, “As Figure 5 indicates, 70% of all participants are interested in further offers regarding robotics workshops and roughly 40% provided her email address” (Keller and John, 2019). By using statistics, it helps make your finding more believable and it helps the reader fully understand how much of the group was interested or not. If the authors did not include the statistics, instead used words like “a lot” or “less”, it doesn’t show any significance. The reader wants to know how much is “a lot” so they can know exactly what is going on. In the other lab report by Galustyan (2019) et la, the authors used tables to show their results. In the tables they had categories as well as percentages to show the reader exactly how many people were put into that category. The authors explained the meaning of the table and explained how it “proves the effectiveness of the experimental work” (Galustyan et la, 2019). Showing statistics and drawing it back to your hypothesis to show that it proves it, definitely helps strengthen your claim and it shows that your work is reliable.
After showing the results comes discussion/analysis. In this part of the lab report the author explains if the results they found answers or goes against their hypothesis. It explains the results in a more detailed way and explains how it backs up their hypothesis or why it goes against it. In the lab repot by Keller and John (2019), they explain how their hypothesis is true by using their findings as evidence. For example, the authors state “Both workshops demonstrate the potential to motivate students for CS, as most of the female and male participants thought more positively of CS and were more interested in it after the workshops”. They tell the reader the results were positive and further explains about why they got the results they got. The authors went in depth about the results, telling the reader about the statistics and what it means, leaving the reader satisfied about the results. Through the analysis, it clears up any confusion the reader might have or something he/she did not understand about in the results. However, in the lab report by Galustyan (2019) et la, there is no analysis. I think the author chose not to write an analysis because he/she thought it was self-explanatory or the author thought he/she explained enough in the result section. But I don’t think the author explained enough in the result section. It was very short and the author could’ve gone more in depth about the results and explain if the results go against or backs up the hypothesis.
The conclusion is the second to last part of a lab report. The purpose of a conclusion is to analyze the hypothesis and summarize the importance of the lab report. You don’t want to introduce new information but use everything you said previously to persuade the reader because it’s the last chance you have to do so. In both lab reports, the authors did excellent in making a conclusion since it recapped everything they said and explained the significance of their research.
Lastly, at the very end of a lab report, a reference is needed. In this part, you want to list every reference you cited so that you don’t plagiarize. It shows where you got some of the information from so that the reader can go read that text to maybe learn more about it. In both lab reports, the authors included references with the number of references they used.
All in all, both of the lab reports were following the structure of how a lab report should look like in the chapter. But for the lab report by Galustyan (2019) et la, there was no discussion for some reason. Other than that, both lab reports addressed each category with enough information and was very organized throughout the paper.
Self-Reflection
Before I started writing my first draft, I figured out what to write about so that when I read the two lab reports I would know what to look for. I annotated both papers so that while I write my paper I know where to go back to the lab reports to get more information. For instance, when I was reader the articles, I was picking out lines I can use for my paper for evidence, which I did throughout the whole paper. I was analyzing both papers to see how they were similar or different from each other. I also used the textbook for help which made this writing easier for me because if I was unsure of something I went back to the textbook to see what I am really looking for in both lab reports. When writing the first draft, I wrote down everything that came to my mind and didn’t go back to reread halfway of me writing. Rather, I finished my first draft then edited my paper. When I was writing each paragraph, I was into it and I just kept writing without stopping. I wrote two paragraphs every day because I wanted to make sure I took the time to really put everything in without missing any information. The per-review helped me tremendously because I had two people read over my text and had feedback from them, so I knew what to fix. Even though I did go back to edit my oven paper, I still had some errors that I didn’t see. Also having you reread my paper and telling me where to add my information helped me make my paper more informative without leaving the reader questioning. I was able to make my paper flow smoother by adding more details to it that was possibly leaving readers confused. I didn’t realize my spacing problem because I wrote this paper in a document that helps you format your paper in APA format. However, I was having problems with numbering the paper, so I copied and pasted onto a different document without realizing the spacing problem.
Reference
- Keller, L., & John, I. (2019). Motivating Female Students for Computer Science by Means of Robot Workshops. Motivating Female Students for Computer Science by
Means of Robot Workshops, 1-21.
- Galustyan, O. G., Solyankin, A. S., Skripkina, A. S., Semeshkina, T. S., & Ledeneva, A.
L. (2019). Application of Blended Learning for Formation of Project Competence of
Future Engineers. Application of Blended Learning for Formation of Project Competence
of Future Engineers, 1–13. https://doi.org/10.3991/ijep.v10i3.12251
