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TEACHING IN THE LABORATORY

Teaching simple experimental design to undergraduates: do your students understand the basics?

Department of Biology, Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, Pennsylvania

This article provides instructors with guidelines for teaching simple experimental design for the comparison of two treatment groups. Two designs with specific examples are discussed along with common misconceptions that undergraduate students typically bring to the experiment design process. Features of experiment design that maximize power and minimize the effects of interindividual variation, thus allowing reduction of sample sizes, are described. Classroom implementation that emphasizes student-centered learning is suggested, and thought questions, designed to help students discover and name the basic principles of simple experiment design for themselves, are included with an answer key.

Key words: controls; randomization; Student’s t-test; teaching

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