Overview and Rationale

LabWriteUp is an application designed to help students write up practical reports. On most science courses, from GCSE, to A-Level, undergraduate and postgraduate courses, students are required to carry out an investigation or research practical and to write up a report using accepted conventions in scientific report writing.

Report writing is an acquired skill. Students new to psychology are not expected to produce publishable reports, but as they progress through their course they are usually expected to have acquired the skill. So, a third year undergraduate dissertation could, in principle, be written to a publishable standard.

However, report writing is often taught by pointing students to good texts on the subject, by encouraging them to read journal articles, and by producing report writing guidelines (often made available on the college's web site or course handbook). Yet, the skills required for report writing are more likely to be acquired through a combination of practice and good quality feedback from tutors.

The main aim of the LabWriteUp software is to speed up the acquisition of this skill. The student is taken through each section of a report and is offered guidance on how to write that section, such as what information to include and in what order. The software often makes textual 'suggestions', such as in the design section and in the results section. These can be edited within the application. When the student feels ready to build a draft report, he or she selects 'Build' and a first draft is created. This can then be saved as an rtf file - a file that can be edited in a word processor, such as Microsoft Word. Indeed, LabWriteUp helps to create a first draft, so it is expected that students will finalise their reports using a word processor.

Next>> Making a Start with LabWriteUp