(233c) Applied Statistics Learning Modules for a Chemical Engineering Transport Lab Course

As part of a course redesign, explicit instruction and activities relating to statistics and design of experiments (DOE) were incorporated into a third-year undergraduate chemical engineering laboratory course. Development of the modules was motivated by exit interviews with senior students, course evaluations, and faculty surveys which identified a need for students to apply statistical tools in a meaningful way with “real-world” data. This work serves as a foundation for a realignment of the two-course chemical engineering lab series at our institution.

Taking an active learning approach, statistical analysis and DOE were taught using student data acquired in multiple transport process experiments with increasing open-endedness throughout the semester. Students used both a factorial design, and a Latin Square block design to simultaneously change multiple variables across multiple trials, demonstrating a real-world example of applied statistics. The modules are guided by the following learning objectives: By the end of this course, students will be able to (a) fit a statistical model to a given or collected data set (b) describe what DOE is and how it is used in a lab setting (c) describe DOE tools (Block Designs, Factorial, etc.) and identify under what circumstances we would use such tools. Lab reports were coded for statistical outcomes and a pre-test / post-test assessment assessed the efficacy of the learning module. Additionally, registrar information on previous statistics courses taken, and demographic information were obtained to situate the impact of the learning outcomes. After the successful implementation of this module, this work will be expanded to include the student application of DOE in the fourth-year unit operations lab.