Features

LabWriteUp has been designed to help students learn how to write good research reports. Although encouraged to write using an appropriate format, students tend to make the same sorts of errors.

LabWriteUp has a comprehensive set of features that are designed to teach report writing either as the student writes their report or as an in-class activity. To see the full range of features of LabWriteUp you could consult the student page or look through the help pages on this site.

Tutorial Maker

An important feature from the tutor's perspective is the Tutorial Maker facility. This allows the tutor to create their own tutorials in LabWriteUp. With these tutorials you can create:

• Tutorials for understanding research designs (from simple two-group designs, through to factorial ANOVA).

• Tutorials for understanding how to interpret and report the results of statistical analyses.

• Tutorials in correct referencing.

• Tutorials in how to write up each section of a report.

• Tutorials that cover an in-class practical, by giving advice about how to write up each section of the report.

• Tutorials that cover key aspects of historically important experiments.

• In-class tests, designed to assess (for formative or summative purposes) knowledge of experimental design and report writing.

Tutorial Maker comes with sixteen tutorials pre-installed. Further tutorials will be available for download in the support section of this website. When a student has completed a tutorial they can save their answers onto a file. These answers may then be compared with ideal answers or marked by the tutor.

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An important goal of LabWriteUp is to promote a high standard of report writing in students new to scientific writing. A second goal is to improve the skills of students in their second and third years of undergraduate study. The application guides the student through each aspect of a report in a step-by-step manner. The student is prompted with questions about all aspects of the experiment, from its design, to the results, the hypothesis or hypotheses, to the introduction and discussion sections. In this way, the student is focused on the relevant issues as they write about each aspect of the experiment. A first draft of the report can be created in the application and this can then be exported as a Rich Text document, and then subsequently edited and completed in a word processor.

Making a Start with LabWriteUp

The first thing to do is enter your name and a title for this LabWriteUp project (this is not the title of the report but just a title to identify the project file by). Work through the Menu Options. Begin with Author Details and then work from the Design, to the Title, Hypothesis, and so on (the Design option should be completed before the Title and Results options).

If at any stage you need help, you can select one of the help buttons. The smaller buttons will open a new window with helpful text, while the larger help buttons will open a page like this.

Save the project file frequently - this will enable you to return to LabWriteUp later and continue with the same project. There is an autosave function that will save the project file every five minutes so if you exit and forget to save or your pc crashes then you still have a recent copy (it saves with the project filename and adds "_autosave.lab".

You can preview most sections of the report at any time by clicking on one of the preview buttons:

If at any stage you encounter a problem or wish to make constructive comments about the application (things you like, things you don´t like, suggested improvements, features you wished it had, and so on), click on the button Send Feedback, which will appear when you save the project file. (You need to be connected to internet to submit feedback.)

LabWriteUp saves projects as project files. These have the suffix ".lab".

When you enter your name, the application remembers this, even if you start a new project and do not enter your name.