tandfonline.com – Tennis Anyone? Teaching Experimental Design by Designing and Executing a Tennis Ball Experiment

Understanding the abstract principles of statistical experimental design can challenge undergraduate students, especially when learned in a lecture setting. This paper presents a concrete and easily replicated example of experimental design principles in action through a hands-on learning activity for students enrolled in an experimental design course. The activity, conducted during five 50-minute classes, requires the students to work as a team to design and execute a simple and safe factorial experiment, and collect and analyze the data. During three in-class design meetings, the students design and plan all aspects of the experiment, including choosing the response and explanatory variables, making a list of needed supplies, creating a randomization schedule with the Minitab DOE utility, and writing a statistical analysis plan. A feasibility study is conducted in the fourth class. During the fifth and last class, the students conduct the experiment. Each student writes a lab report including all background research, methods, analyses, and conclusions, as well as a reflection on their learning experience. Past students’ reflections indicate the active-learning experience was enjoyable, and boosted course engagement and perceived conceptual understanding.