Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
25.5 OPEN NOTEBOOK SCIENCE IN UNDERGRADUATE
PHYSICS LABORATORY HOSTED ON O PEN W ET W ARE
25.5.1
Overview
For the four fall semesters of 2007-2010, ONS has been carried out by physics
students enrolled in a junior laboratory course at the University of New
Mexico (2007 [160], 2008 [161], 2009 [162], 2010 [163]). The experiences have
been summarized in blog posts [164, 165]. The fully public electronic note-
books are hosted by OpenWetWare (OWW), a service initiated in 2005 by
students in the Endy and Knight laboratories at the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology (MIT) [166]. OWW currently has over 8000 members and its
primary funding is through a grant from the National Science Foundation
[167]. All student work is recorded and presented on the public wiki, and
almost all instructor feedback is presented on the same wiki pages [168]. The
only nonpublic information is the letter grade for the work. From 2007 to 2010,
approximately 60 students have participated in the ONS course, with most of
them majoring in physics, astronomy, math, or a combination of those. No
effort was made to formally track the students, but the instructor knows that
at least six students from the 2007 and 2008 semesters have since enrolled in
Ph.D. programs. Two students from those semesters have begun teaching high
school physics. Many of the students continued to use OWW after completing
the junior laboratory course for a variety of purposes, including other lab
courses [169] and undergraduate research [170].
25.5.2
Description of How Students and Instructor Carry Out ONS
There are three types of work that junior lab students record in their public
pages on OWW: a primary laboratory notebook [168], informal laboratory
summaries [171], and one formal research report [172]. For the purposes of
this report, we will focus on the primary laboratory notebook in the context
of one laboratory “cycle.” The students complete six individual laboratories
throughout the semester, and they are free to work alone or in groups of two.
We will describe typical workfl ow for one of these cycles.
25.5.2.1 Preparation and Safety
After choosing a laboratory to work on
for the subsequent two three-hour lab sessions (three hours in week 1, three
hours in week 2), students are required to do background reading so that they
have a good understanding of what their goals will be, what kind of equipment
they will need, and especially what the safety hazards will be. When they feel
they are fully prepared, they will ask the instructor or the teaching assistant
to carry out their “safety quiz.” The instructor or TA asks the students to
explain the work and to identify the main personal safety hazards and then
potential hazards to the equipment. This exam is carried out orally. Many
students will record safety issues in their primary laboratory notebook, with
by far the most common safety hazard being electrical shock [173].
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