Abstract #300622

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JSM 2002 Abstract #300622
Activity Number: 408
Type: Contributed
Date/Time: Thursday, August 15, 2002 : 10:30 AM to 12:20 PM
Sponsor: Section on Statistical Education*
Abstract - #300622
Title: Simulation Tools for Teaching Experimental Design
Author(s): Russell Lenth*+
Affiliation(s): University of Iowa
Address: 241 Schaeffer Hall, Iowa City, Iowa, 52242, USA
Keywords: Experimental design ; Simulation ; Activity-based learning ; Java ; Projects
Abstract:

All too often, a course on experimental design turns into a course that is almost entirely devoted to analysis of experimental data, with design issues in the background. The reason for this is that to learn to design experiments, you actually have to do experiments. Design-conscious teachers often incorporate project work in a course. Such activities are extremely valuable to students; but there are problems too. Real experiments are often very time-consuming, and it is hard to handle more than one or two per semester. If students are given the freedom to choose their own project topics, the instructor has little opportunity to focus projects on specific instructional goals. An alternative approach is to develop scenarios and ask students to design and carry out experiments using software that simulates the data. There is a range of possibilities for how structured or unstructured is the activity. I will describe my experiences in teaching design with simulation projects and demonstrate some Web-based software that I have written to facilitate developing design scenarios.

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Revised March 2002