Electronic Lab Notebooks Impact Biomedical Engineering Students' Quality of Documentation and Technical Communication

摘要

Laboratory notebooks have long been used as a tool to develop student documentation and technical communication skills in laboratory courses. Given the presence of social media as well as other methods of electronic communication, computer mediated activities provide an opportunity to educate students in a familiar setting. For this reason, we have pursued a study to measure the impact of electronic laboratory notebooks (ELNs, LabArchives Classroom Edition) on the quality of upper-level biomedical engineering students' documentation and technical communication skills. A total of thirty-three ELNs submitted by students enrolled in a biomechanics lab course during autumn 2016 and thirty-three paper-based notebooks submitted by students enrolled in the same course during autumn 2015 were selected for this study. Notebooks were quantitatively analyzed against a rubric designed to measure how well the selected notebooks met assessment criteria in the categories of communication, documentation and presentation. Results showed significantly higher overall mean and category-specific scores for ELNs compared to paper-based notebook submissions (p < 0.05). It was concluded that lab notebook keeping in an electronic format may be an effective medium for aiding students in improving documentation and technical communication skills.