Laboratory Grading Policy
Last revised: Tuesday, October 1, 2002


Your laboratory grade counts for 30% of your course grade, and will be determined based on criteria listed in the following table. Note that your TAs will provide feedback on each student's laboratory performance, attitude, attendance, and other relevant feedback at the end of the semester. When instructors are converting final course numbers into letter grades, they look carefully at these TA comments -- for students close to a grade boundary (e.g., a student with an 89.2 whose numerical grade is a B+ but is close to an A-), positive comments may be used by the instructor to boost the student to the next grade category.


Item % of Lab Grade Comments
10 Quizzes (out of 11) 40% Each week (except the first week of lab) there will be a short quiz at the beginning of the lab session. The lowest quiz grade will be dropped. If you miss a quiz, that is the one dropped.
Laboratory Exercises to hand in 20% Five (5) completed lab exercises will be due. These will cover four of the activities in the first half of the semester (excluding the two for the formal lab reports), as well as two during the second half of the semester.
Formal Lab Reports 25% You are required to hand in two (2) formal lab reports (these include; Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results, and Discussion sections) for the following lab exercises:
  1. Report #1: Part II of the pH, Acids, Bases, and Buffers lab (10 points)
  2. Report #2: Enzymes (15 points)
Both provide an opportunity for you to write about your experiments in standard scientific format. See Appendix A, "Lab Report Format", in your Lab Manual for more information about format. Also see examples of "good" and "poor" student reports to see what to emulate and what to avoid.
Practical Exam 15% A cumulative practical covering the fetal pig and related material from the second half of the course. Practical exams will be given during the last full week of the course.


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