Comparing a typical student lab report to the latest issue of Nature is a bit like comparing a high school football game to Super Bowl XLIX—at first blush, the differences in quality may look unbridgeable. Still, no self-respecting football coach quits running practices just because most of her players won’t go pro. Similarly, science teachers need to push all students to master the language, conventions, and thought processes underpinning formal science writing, even though many students will choose careers outside the field of professional science.

This course will tackle the formal lab report—the written lifeblood of the scientific enterprise, and the most common writing assignment in science classes—by isolating the content and teaching strategies most relevant to each lab report section. In addition, this module will illustrate how the same writing skills used for lab reports can be applied to student research papers—papers that explore evidence beyond what students can generate in the classroom laboratory!