Design of Experiments: Student Response to an Experiential Learning Approach

ABET Student Outcome b) calls for engineering programs to demonstrate that students have "an ability to design and conduct experiments, as well as to analyze and interpret data" 1 .Our department, as likely have many others across the country, has historically addressed this curriculum requirement with instruction in statistics and uncertainty analysis either in lab or other courses.Does presenting the fundamentals of statistical analysis, uncertainty and error propagation truly give students the ability to design experiments?What, exactly, are program evaluators looking for as evidence that the students in a program are demonstrating the ability to "design and conduct experiments"?In this paper, an experiential approach to ensuring that students have some training in design of experiments is described along with the responses to a student survey assessing their attitudes toward this approach and how they perceived its effect on their laboratory learning experience.