How much do students learn from resubmission of lab reports?

The Applied Physics program at the University of Ljubljana Faculty of Mathematics and Physics is based on the Investigative Science Learning Environment. The whole class meetings, problem solving sessions, and labs are synchronised so that they form a coherent whole. In the labs, students work in groups of three or four. They solve one lab assignment per week and submit one group report per week. The groups change every week. The reports are scored on the Rutgers Scientific Abilities Rubrics. For each lab, between three and four abilities are chosen to be evaluated. Students have the opportunity to resubmit each report twice after the first submission.

We have investigated patterns in students' scores over a year. Previous research has shown that significant improvement occurs between resubmissions. We investigated in what way students transfer their improvement in one lab to their reports in subsequent labs. Our findings show a general trend of improvement. By triangulating this research with interviews with students we have found that many factors affect their initial score on any particular lab. We will discuss some of the factors that negatively affect students' performance in our setting, and ways to mitigate them that we have already used in class.

We acknowledge financial support by ARIS P1-0060 program and NOO ULTRA project.