A Didactic Activity for Introducing Design and Optimization of Experiments Assisted by Revised Bloom's Taxonomy

Abstract

The methodology used in this study was action-research and the considered activity is been applied successfully for at least five years to undergraduate and to master classes for Industrial Engineering students in Brazil. It showed a significant result in both cases, providing the basis for the deepening in the subject in further lessons. Therefore, the main purpose of this paper is to present this didactic activity that uses a statistical software to introduce the subject Design of Experiments (DoE) starting from a simple process of everyday life. Despite DoE in Brazil being emphasized in Industrial Engineering, this issue is extremely relevant in all areas of research where there is experimentation. The activity’s idea was to make students able to interact and understand the concepts of planning and optimizing experiments in a natural and intuitive way by following seven steps proposed in the literature: 1. Recognition and statement of the problem, 2. Choice of factors, levels, and ranges, 3. Selection of the response variable, 4. Choice of experimental design, 5. Conduction of experiment, 6. Statistical data analysis, and 7. Conclusions and recommendations. In order to confirm and strengthen the learning process, some exercises are then offered to students. To ensure the effectiveness, the exercises were designed based on the new version of the Taxonomy of Educational Objectives, also called Revised Bloom's Taxonomy. This proposed exercises discuss the content at all levels of the cognitive domain.