Lab reports arrive as a bundle - the written report plus spreadsheets, graphs, photos of the setup, and occasionally a short video clip of a procedure or result. Email handles one file at a time, not five. Attachments bounce, mobile photos get auto-compressed, and half the class submits only the PDF because fitting everything in a single email is too much friction.
Why lab reports are tricky to collect
A typical lab report submission might include: - A PDF or Word document (the report itself) - An Excel file with raw data - Screenshots or photos of the experiment - Sometimes a video of a procedure
That's 4-6 files per student, potentially 100+ files for a class. Email falls apart at this scale.
Using an upload link
Create an upload page with these settings:
- Title: "Chemistry Lab 201 - Titration Lab Report"
- Description: "Upload your lab report (PDF), data spreadsheet (XLSX), and any supporting photos. Name files with your last name prefix."
- File types: "Any files" (to accept mixed formats)
- Max files: 10 (per uploader)
Tips specific to lab reports
Encourage bundling: Ask students to put all files in a single ZIP before uploading if they have many files. This makes it easier for you to organize later.
Photo quality: If students are documenting experiments with photos, remind them to upload the original photos - not screenshots from their camera roll.
Data integrity: For data-heavy assignments, ask students to include raw data files alongside their processed results. The upload link preserves original files without conversion or compression.
After collection
Download the ZIP and create one folder per student. Review reports alongside their data files. The upload timestamps help you track submission times for deadline enforcement.
Filename conventions matter more than you'd think
A class of 30 students each submitting 4-6 files produces 120-180 items in the ZIP. Without a naming rule, you see "Lab3.pdf", "lab report final.docx", "chem_lab.pdf", "asdf.pdf" - and figuring out which belongs to whom means opening each file.
The rule that works for lab reports: lastname_lab#_filetype. Example: patel_lab3_report.pdf, patel_lab3_data.xlsx, patel_lab3_photo1.jpg. After download, all of a student's files sort together alphabetically in any file explorer. You scan a folder of 180 files in seconds instead of minutes.
Put this rule directly in the upload page description. Students who ignore it are rare; the ones who follow it save you significant time at grading.
When students upload the wrong file
A fraction of each class submits a wrong file - blank document, last semester's lab, a screenshot of the instructions instead of the report. With an upload link, these surface in the dashboard and you can spot them before grading: file sizes suspiciously small (under 50 KB for a full lab report), or image files where you expected PDFs.
The fix is usually a one-line email back to the student with a fresh upload link, open for 24 hours. Don't build a re-submission workflow into the original page; a second, short-lived link is cleaner and the dashboard stays clean.
Multi-section courses
If you teach three sections of the same lab course, use three separate upload pages - not one. Separate pages mean separate dashboards, separate ZIPs, and no cross-contamination of whose deadline is whose. The 30 seconds to create three pages saves an hour of sorting by section after download.