How to use the lab notebook
Table of contents
- What is a lab notebook?
- Submitting an entry
- Viewing your personal entries
- Viewing all entries for a given project
- Troubleshooting
What is a lab notebook?
A lab notebook is a primary record of research used to document the work we do and the experiments we conduct. Our lab uses a shared online lab notebook hosted in REDCap for this purpose. Lab members submit an entry at the end of each work day using a simple online form. Each person has permission to view (1) their own lab notebook entries and (2) all entries pertaining projects on which they are involved.
Submitting an entry
Each day you work in the lab, you should submit an entry into the lab notebook. You may submit as many entries as you like, but we’ve found that a single entry created at the end of each work day is very effective.
Submit an entry to the ChildLangLab Lab Notebook
The survey is fairly self explainatory. Important things to note are:
- Research assistants need to include the number of hours they worked that day. This value is compared with the time you report each week, so it is important you are accurate.
- Everyone should include the name of the project before any entered notes. For example:
- general lab tasks: today I did the RA daily workflow and returned some phone calls
- artificial DOM: I ran 3 subjects in artificial DOM (id# 3, 4, 5)
Viewing your personal entries
Personal entries can be viewed via the REDCap database.
ChildLangLab Lab Notebook on REDCap
- Enter the Lab Notebook via redcap. In the left side bar under Reports, you will see your name listed under Entries by invidiual.
- Select your name from this list to view your lab notebook entries.
Viewing all entries for a given project
Use the same method described in Viewing your personal entries to view all entries pertaining to a particular project. Project entries will be listed under Reports and Entries by project.
Note: you must be a contributing member of the project in order to view lab notebook entries pertaining to it.
Troubleshooting
I want to view my entries but there is no report with my name.
It’s likely you