A course in problem solving with experimental design

Abstract

To address needs for accreditation and our university's requirements for graduation, we have implemented a sophomore-level course on problem solving and experimental design. This course reinforces problem-solving strategies from material and energy balances and requires students to establish their own experiment designs to explore chemical and physical phenomena related to junior-level thermodynamics and transport courses. Concepts in statistics and numerical methods, technical writing, engineering ethics, and laboratory and industrial safety are all introduced in the scope of this course. This course serves as the first in our curriculum where students are responsible for the creation of laboratory procedures, in contrast to their typical chemistry labs where experimental methods are provided. Given a brief (1/2-1 page) prompt explaining the principle of interest and a list of available laboratory equipment, students are required to explicitly outline the objective, hypothesis, and methods of their experiment, followed by statistical analysis of their data and consideration of relevant theory. The course is structured in such a way that students must determine which statistical techniques are appropriate for processing their experimental data. The course is also designed to meet the Writing Intensive requirements of our university, through a combination of individual lab reports, reflections on their ability to write in a technical context, and brief essays on engineering ethics and laboratory safety. Specific course logistics, including the sequence of activities, learning objectives, and connections to student outcomes in junior- And senior-level courses, are considered here. Direct assessment of student performance against specific learning objectives from the past three years is shown here as an example of how the course is continuously improved. © American Society for Engineering Education, 2014.