I often host students interested in doing research for academic credit through Biology, Biotechnology, and our MA (masters by coursework) program. These experiential learning components are often quite varied and customized to the students needs, but since this is also a course, I need a means of assesment at the end of the semester. Typically this takes the form of a Research Report, and this document is intended to provide an outline. The length requirements will vary with number of credits and class level of the student, but all will contain common elements. Some reports will have some sections more developed than others but the goal here is to at least have some information in each section. We are essentially looking for a record of what you did, so we can build on the work in the future (or know what went wrong if the experiment flops and someone else wants to study something similar later on!)
Reports should include:
Give the project a descriptive title
If your work was to become an academic publication, who, besides you, was a part of making this work happen? please list and describe roles of students, graduate assistants, helpers from the community, and faculty involved.
What do we know about the system you're studying? Include a brief literature review including scientific literature setting up the system and problem you are studying (this is not an exact ratio, but let's say at least four papers per credit hour you're enrolled in should be included in this review).
This can take a few forms, but basically, a paragraph explaining why you're doing the work you're doing, what you expect to see, and why.
Write down everything- and I mean EVERYTHING you did. Think of it as a recipe card for other scientists to follow and all the notes on the recipe. This includes, materials you used, measurements you took, tools or machines you used to take the mesurements, and for the analysis this means anything you did to your data prior to analysis (pre-processing), the statistical tests or models you used, and the assumptions or options you made. If you're doing field or lab work, include details about when the work was done, where, and how many times. For many of you, you will be composing analysis code- please provide a saved copy of your original code and include it in the report (It can be saved as a 'supplemental file' and just included in the package you send me at the end of the semester).
What did you find? Please include a results section that comments on patterns you found. Please include any graphs/charts tables produced as part of your analysis, photos of your work, and, THIS IS IMPORTANT, the raw data tables (in excel or CSV format) for any data you collected.
What does it all mean? What did you see? How do you interpret it? Was the approach you used good? Did the approach answer the questions or problems you set out to examine? What would you do next time?
Cite your references!! (use referencing software like Zotero for fewer headaches)