Results portfolios and lab/field notebooks will be used to record our studies and synthesize results.
	Portfolio	Lab and field notebook
Purpose:	The portfolio will be the main vehicle for polished syntheses of the data we are collecting and its integration with larger themes. The portfolio is a 3-ring binder that will add units weekly, building both our dataset and understanding and your skills in data collection and interpretation. It will also be the primary means of evaluation of achievment and progress, and for instructor feedback on your work.	The lab and field notebook will be your main workspace in this course. It is not the place for the polished synthesis of what you find but the space where you record your data, rough out the ideas, and do your thinking. Instructors will review the lab and field notebook regularly and provide suggestions on effective documentation and use of this workspace. Since this is your personal workspace for in-process rather than polished work; evaluation will be qualitative (ie check plus, check, or check minus) rather than quantitative.
Contents	Weekly synthesis of that weeks results. Some weeks, this will be a full report in the format of a lab report or scientific paper (introduction, methods, results, discussion sections), other times it will be a brief synthesis to specific questions. Each weekly synthesis will be given a letter grade.	Entry for every lab or field meeting. The entry should start out with basic information such as the date, if a field lab the site and local conditions, and a brief summary of the purpose or objective of that field or lab meeting and what is being done. Each entry should then include the observations, results, and calculations achieved during that meeting. Most students find that making good observations and sketches is invaluable in later interpretation of the data. Each entry should conclude with a brief summary of any basic conclusions that could be gleaned during the meeting and questions to follow up on with further analyses.
	Faculty comment sheet for each weekly assignment, which will include an evaluation of the strengths of each report and aspects that you should work on in future reports.	Summary or answers to specific questions from assigned readings. We will indicate the important aspects that you should be looking for in each assigned reading. Putting your notes on these in the lab-field notebook will make it easier to integrate what you read with the studies you are carrying out.
	Summary sheet of weekly major issues and data collected (could be pasted in lab-field notebook instead).	Many students also find it helpful to put class notes in this same lab-field notebook, again because it makes it easier to integrate what we discuss in class with the results you find in your local studies. Feel free to tape key figures from class handouts into this notebook again, to make it your integrated resource and workspace.
		Notes taken as you are working on interpreting what you see in your study data. Sometimes you will think of a good idea or something to look up at an odd moment, while your computer is off or your report document not open. As you are looking at data and making graphs (in Excel or some other program), it may be helpful to jot notes on what you find in the notebook as an intermediate stage (ie. before you are ready to pull things together and be writing paragraphs of text).