Promoting Analysis of Practical Data and Student Collaboration using the Collaboration Space in Microsoft OneNote Class Notebook

Science practical reports traditionally involve students writing individual reports, with the student’s own results providing the basis for the discussion in this report. In my teaching I have been using the OneNote Class... [ view full abstract ]

Science practical reports traditionally involve students writing individual reports, with the student’s own results providing the basis for the discussion in this report. In my teaching I have been using the OneNote Class Notebook to promote student exposure to the class data, and in turn promote analysis of this data. This exposure to different results from the same experiment provides students with more data to analyse, and they are often faced with the question of how the same experiment can generate conflicting data.

The OneNote Class Notebook is divided into 3 sections. In the Collaboration Space students can share and edit data. Lecturers can also provide feedback in this space. The Content Library can only be edited by the lecturer, and here they can provide supporting resources, such as methods and papers relating to the experiments carried out. The Student Notebook provides private space for individual students to write their reports, and get individual feedback on this work.  

My students are required to share the data they generated in practical sessions in the Collaboration Space of the Class Notebook. This data must be clearly labelled and described to facilitate sharing with others, which promotes the skill of data presentation. The collaboration space can then be used to troubleshoot and plan future experiments. This promotes student engagement as they have to analyse data.

 Overall the Collaboration Space does promote student engagement with the data generated in practicals, however I would like to further promote the collaborative aspect. In order to do this, I plan to pilot a study where students working in groups will have to analyse the class data, read relevant literature, troubleshoot and plan to repeat the same experiment in the next practical session. Evidence of this group collaborative process will be documented in the Collaboration Space.