BIOSCI 152 SLIME MOLD EXPERIMENT – REPORT GUIDELINES AND GRADING RUBRIC
Assignment Learning Objectives and General Reminders
• The objective of this assignment is for you to plan, carry out and analyze an experiment and write it up in scientific style using formatting and formal scientific language
• This is an individual exercise – you need to write your own work from your own understanding, not just paraphrasing sources. Plagiarism will not be tolerated (and plagiarized assignments will receive zero).
• Does your report consist of well-organized paragraphs (i.e., clear topic sentence, one idea per
paragraph)?
• Have you proof-read your report to check for errors of grammar and spelling?
• Your report needs to follow the rules for Scientific writing as indicated in the PowerPoint “Scientific Writing”, organized clearly with subheadings for each of the sections: Title, Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results, Discussion, Literature Cited. See also Lab 1 Scientific Writing powerpoint pdf on D2L, for details. See formatting and detailed requirements below:

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1. Title
• The title should be informative, conveying something about what you investigated, and include the correctly written scientific name of the organism
• On your title page, also include your name, your lab section # and the date submitted
2. Introduction:
• This where you provide relevant background to slime mold and examining growth and should be long enough to adequately introduce the topic but not more than 25% of the report?
• You need to have a clear statement of the purpose of the experiment
• You need to clearly state the hypothesis and predictions
• Clearly state the control and variables (independent, dependent, and standardized)
• All supporting information from the literature needs to acknowledge the source with a citation, using correct format for in-text citations (Author/s, year) – see Lab 1 Scientific Writing powerpoint
3. Methods:
• Describe what you did in sequential, detailed manner, clearly enough for someone to be able to
repeat the experiment, including which conditions were the same and which were different for control and experimental treatments

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• Methods should be written in past tense
• Include specific sample sizes used, exact incubation times, and organisms used, with correct
scientific names, terminology and units (use only metric units)
• Do not copy the lab manual word for word but describe what you did in your own words. When
general ideas or principles came from the lab manual, restate in your own words but also correctly
cite the lab manual as the source
4. Results:
• You need to include a text description of your qualitative observations and comparisons
• Include a clearly labelled graph (constructed in excel) of the growth of your organism based on the
measurements (see details and example figure below)
• Include calculations of growth rate for the experiment (see below) as part of your comparisons
• When you describe something shown in the graph in the Results text, refer to the figure e.g. “The  experimental treatment started growing faster than the control (Figure 1)”
• Do not include any interpretation of the results (leave for the Discussion) – describe only that was measured or observed
5. Discussion:

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• Address statements of hypothesis and predictions from the Introduction – clearly state whether the results supported or refuted the hypothesis and why
• State the significance of the results in terms of what may promote or inhibit growth of the organism
• State how your results relate to similar studies and what is known about the subject
• If applicable, speculate reasonably why the experiment didn’t work and how you might improve the
experimental design or measurements
• Link your conclusions back to the background about slime mold growth from the Introduction
• Include correctly-formatted citations for all supporting information from the literature Area covered
6. Literature Cited:
• Include a complete ‘Literature Cited’ section including lab manual citation:
[Sandgren C, P Engevold and S Hoot. 2013. BIO SCI 152 Laboratory 4: Life cycles: Survey of Fungi,
Protists and Algae Diversity. Available on D2L.]
• You should have a minimum of 3 outside references, with at least 2 from the published scientific
literature. No websites can be included as sources. Do not include hyperlinks to journal articles
• Include all the references cited in the text, and do not include references that you do not cite in the text
• Use a consistent and correct reference formatting (see Lab 1 Scientific Writing powerpoint pdf, and
‘SAMPLE ARTICLE FROM ECOLOGY JOURNAL’ on D2L (in Content, ‘Writing Help and Report Grading Rubrics’))

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