Application of Design-Based Learning and Outcome-Based Education in Basic Industrial Engineering Teaching: A New Teaching Method

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear Authors,

Thanks for your resubmission. I appreciate the significant improvements made in the submitted manuscript.

The main revision the current manuscript requires is regarding the discussion section. This section is mainly presenting results without justifications and arguments that are linked to the available literature.

Please also find other minor comments below:

• Line 21: OBE must be defined in the abstract
• Line 27: Recommended to be past tense and in passive form
• Line 28: "so on" as an informal phrase must be changed
• Line 62: "more and more" to be changed to "more"
• "Specific characteristics of the subject" and "specific courses of CL1" can be summarized in few paragraphs. The sections with letters and numbers are confusing. Writing in this section can be improved 
• All figures should have clearer and more detailed descriptions 
• Last sentence in conclusion is not showing a very robust future work 

Kind Regards

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Paper topic does not fit into the journal scope, find a more suitable publishing platform. 

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

The paper “Application of Design-based Learning and Outcome-based Education in Basic Industrial Engineering Teaching: A New Teaching Method” is a very interesting work about applying two teaching approaches and exploring their effects.

I would like to thank the authors for their efforts in developing teaching methodologies that improve the learning of future industrial engineers. I encourage authors to consider my comments as there are some issues to address in order to be published.

In the introduction, the explanation of DBL is extremely long and detailed. This information could be found in the references. However, the explanation of OBE is very short. The state of the art has not been deeply studied, since it is not presented how the other authors have carried out their experiments.

Section 2.2 should be revised since description on industrial engineering is repeated without providing additional information. The title of section 2.2 presents only DBL, however, information on OBE is presented. The text in Figure 2 cannot be read properly because of its small size. The paragraph between lines 224 and 229 should be revised. The reading of paragraph 2.3.3 could be improved by replacing the phrase "the first step..." and so on with ordered bullet points. Lines 354-356 are repeated in 341-343. In addition, specific characteristics of the subject in a table could improve comprehension. The text in Figure 4 is small.

Have the authors considered that interviewing students personally may bias their response? Please explain how they have dealt with this bias. The authors say that they follow 92 students, however, later there are only two classes (60 students in total). Please clarify this. The survey questions would be better placed in an Appendix. More information should be provided on the data processing to obtain results (statistical methods, criteria for accepting responses, etc.).

Are paragraphs 401-432 results? This does not seem an appropriate place to introduce these results. Moreover, these results do not indicate numerical values, so subjective (not data-driven) assessments are made.

Section 5 should be called "Results". In fact, in this section currently called discussion, no discussion of the results is provided. The values presented should be analysed in order to propose possible explanations and criticised in order to deduce subsequent conclusions. Moreover, none of the decisions made in the process of designing the classroom intervention are questioned. Either expand section 5 by providing a discussion or add a section where it is carried out.

Specifically, within the inadequately named discussion section:

- It has not been previously reported which teachers collected information about interactions between students, nor how it was carried out.

- The order of the results in figures 6 and 7 is not appropriate; it would be more convenient in descending order.

- The type of graph in figure 8 is not appropriate, since ordering the groups in another way would modify the linear pattern. I propose to use a bar chart.

- Analysis of responses to surveys with open-ended questions (no options to choose from) often presents interesting phrases that represent the opinion of the respondents. Doing this would greatly enrich the reading.

The conclusion section is also not entirely adequate: the authors compile the paper, but do not draw conclusions after analysing the possible explanations for the results. The limitations would be better placed in the discussion.

Other comments:

- Line 101: I think the name of the course is not necessary.

- Please review the use of acronyms. Using it in titles and figure captions does not help readability.

- The phrase "Basic industrial engineering is a very practical course" is repeated throughout the text.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

The authors took into account all my proposals in round 1. The article has improved its exposition. Thank you for your considerations.

I made a mistake in expressing my comment about the current Figure 6 and 7. I meant the order of the categories to be descending, i.e. A, B, C, D, E and F. I was not referring to the punctuation, but to the letter. This way it follows the same order as the questions in the questionnaire.

Author Response

Thanks for your suggestions. In view of your comments, we have modified figure 6 and figure 7 according to your suggestions.