Teaching simple experimental design to undergraduates: do your students understand the basics?

Area of Science:

• Educational Psychology
• Experimental Design

Background:

• Undergraduate students often struggle with fundamental principles of experimental design.
• Effective teaching strategies are needed to address common misconceptions in experiment design.

Purpose of the Study:

• To provide instructors with guidelines for teaching simple experimental design.
• To illustrate effective designs for comparing two treatment groups.
• To help students understand and apply basic principles of experimental design.

Main Methods:

• Discussion of two experimental designs with specific examples.
• Identification and explanation of common student misconceptions.
• Description of features to maximize experimental power and minimize variation.
• Inclusion of thought questions and an answer key for student-centered learning.

Main Results:

• Provides practical guidelines for instructors on teaching experimental design.
• Highlights methods to improve experimental power and reduce sample size.
• Offers tools for students to discover and internalize design principles.

Conclusions:

• Effective teaching of experimental design can be achieved through student-centered approaches.
• Understanding and addressing common misconceptions is crucial for student learning.
• Optimizing experimental design can lead to more efficient and powerful studies.