Lab Meetings

DISCLAIMER: Everything on this page is how I have done things the past year, not necessarily how you need to continue to structure meetings in the future. This is intended to give you some insight and ideas for how you want to proceed with future lab congregations.

Lab meetings are a great opportunity for you to check in with the lab as a whole. Currently, we hold meetings with the entire lab every other week. Some projects also have individual group meetings on a weekly basis.

Starting Spring 2020, we (David and I) implemented a new group lab meeting structure modeled off of the Early Childhood Cognition lab meetings. For each lab meeting, we choose a graduate student or honors student to assign 1 or 2 empirical articles, give a presentation about their work, and lead a discussion on the readings. The majority of our undergraduate RA's are coders, and very few have the opportunity to work directly with children. While coding is incredibly important, we wanted to find another way to broaden their experience with child development research through these presentations and article discussions.

For those who cannot attend lab meetings, we require that they submit a 1 page response on the assigned readings, to be uploaded to the Google Drive (Lab Assignments -> Dated Folder) by the beginning of lab meeting time. The intent is that these individuals still get the benefits of a lab discussion by expressing their thoughts on paper. I grade these responses on a 0 - 1 scale, with 0 meaning they did not submit, 0.5 meaning it lacked thought and effort, and 1 meaning it was a meaningful reflection where independent ideas were explored.

Lab meetings are required, but every RA has 1 free pass for an unexcused absence. Subsequent absences require that the RA submits a reflection, just like their counterparts with scheduling conflicts. Similarly, the RA's who cannot attend lab meetings are allowed 1 missed submission to be excused. If you plan to continue with this structure, I would suggest keeping a diligent log of attendance sheets and submission grades. Lab meetings account for 20% of an RA's overall semester grade, so it does have an impact.

End of semester presentations occur in the last 2 lab meetings of the semester. These are short, 5 - 10 minute PowerPoint presentations done in groups of 3 or 4, that simply highlight their work assignments and their reflections about their time in the lab. Students also have the option of submitting a 3-page paper if they are not comfortable presenting.

For more information about lab meetings, check out the Syllabus, RA Information tab, or the End of Semester Presentations tab.

Meeting attendance spreadsheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1uKh3TpodQpURZODDYPzEv29JHcKa1lUQ5g9aKc1FKyE/edit#gid=1111527443