Development Of Core Concepts And Learning Outcomes For The Introductory Transportation Course
- Conference
- Location
-
Louisville, Kentucky
- Publication Date
-
June 20, 2010
- Start Date
-
June 20, 2010
- End Date
-
June 23, 2010
- ISSN
-
2153-5965
- Conference Session
- Tagged Division
-
Civil Engineering
- Page Count
-
17
- Page Numbers
-
15.417.1 - 15.417.17
- DOI
-
10.18260/1-2--16413
- Permanent URL
-
https://peer.asee.org/16413
- Download Count
-
411
Paper Authors
Kristen Sanford Bernhardt
Lafayette College
orcid.org/0000-0001-7115-0119
KRISTEN L. SANFORD BERNHARDT is an Assistant Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Lafayette College, where she teaches courses related to transportation, civil infrastructure, and engineering ethics and researches issues related to infrastructure systems modeling. Dr. Sanford Bernhardt received her Ph.D. and M.S. from Carnegie Mellon University and her B.S.E. from Duke University, all in Civil Engineering.
Steven Beyerlein University of Idaho
STEVEN W. BEYERLEIN is a professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Idaho, where he coordinates an inter-disciplinary, college-wide capstone design program. He received a Ph.D. in from Washington State University, MS from Dartmouth College, and BS from University of Massachusetts. His research interests include engine testing, alternative fuel combustion, design pedagogy, and assessment of professional skills in project environments.
Andrea Bill University of Wisconsin
ANDREA BILL is a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison pursuing a Ph.D. in Civil Engineering, with an emphasis in traffic engineering and safety. Her research incorporates aspects from each of these disciplines, with a specific emphasis on discovering new and innovative ways to analyze traffic crashes, especially among the young. Prior to enrolling at UW-Madison, Andrea was an associate researcher at the Massachusetts Traffic Safety Research Program. Andrea received her BSCE from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst in 2002 and BA in Physics and Classics from Mount Holyoke College in 2001.
Shashi Nambisan Iowa State University
SHASHI NAMBISAN, PhD, PE is Director of the Institute for Transportation and Professor of Civil Engineering at Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa. He enjoys working with students and he has taught undergraduate and graduate courses in the area of Transportation systems as well as undergraduate capstone design courses. Dr. Nambisan has led efforts on over 145 research projects that have addressed and responded to local, statewide, regional and national issues in transportation and information systems management related to policy analysis, management, planning, infrastructure development, safety, and operations.
Ida van Schalkwyk Oregon State University
IDA VAN SCHALKWYK is a Senior Assistant Research Professor in the School of Civil and Construction Engineering at Oregon State University, where she teaches courses related to transportation engineering and conducts research in the area of transportation safety. Dr. van Schalkwyk received her Ph.D. from Arizona State University and her M.Eng. in Transportation Engineering and her B.Eng. in Civil Engineering from the University of Pretoria, South Africa.
Rod Turochy Auburn University
ROD E. TUROCHY is an Associate Professor in the Department of Civil Engineering at Auburn University, where he has been employed since 2001.
He earned bachelors and master’s degrees at Virginia Tech and a Ph.D. at the University of Virginia, all in civil engineering. He teaches
courses in transportation engineering, traffic engineering, transportation planning, and intelligent transportation systems. His current research activities are in the areas of traffic engineering, highway safety, and engineering education.
Rhonda Young Texas Christian University
RHONDA K. YOUNG is an Associate Professor of Civil and Architectural Engineering at the University of Wyoming, where she teaches courses in transportation operations, planning, and design. Her research area is in transportation planning and decision making and rural intelligent transportation systems. Dr. Young received her PhD and MSCE from the University of Washington and her BSCE from Oregon State University.
Abstract
NOTE: The first page of text has been automatically extracted and included below in lieu of an abstract
Development of Core Concepts and Learning Outcomes for the Introductory Transportation Course
Abstract
In June, 2009, over 60 members of the Transportation Engineering Education community met in Portland, OR to discuss teaching and learning related to transportation engineering. One of the motivations for the conference was to address challenges experienced by faculty teaching the “Introduction to Transportation Engineering” course offered at most institutions and required for the bachelor’s degree in civil engineering at many. An outcome of the conference is a working group that is planning a series of activities to develop a set of core concepts and learning outcomes for this introductory transportation course. The goal of this paper is to report on the status of this effort and to stimulate conversation related to learning outcomes in the variety of civil engineering sub-disciplines.
Building on existing literature, the group plans to identify and validate a set of key transportation concepts. Following best practices in course design, we will also develop a set of outcomes related to these concepts around which a course could be developed. Further, we expect to identify a minimum set of requirements that ought to be met by any introductory transportation course, as well as a larger set of outcomes and levels of achievement from which instructors would select to be consistent with departmental and institutional missions, and the expertise of the instructor.
This paper first summarizes the results of several surveys over time related to transportation course content. It then reviews other initiatives related to developing a set of disciplinary learning outcomes, including the ASCE Body of Knowledge, and discusses frameworks for organizing knowledge and learning outcomes. The paper continues with a description of the efforts of the working group, including some draft knowledge tables for selected transportation topics. Finally, the paper outlines the next steps in the process and proposes some assessment criteria for the effort.
Introduction
Transportation engineers are required to plan, design, build, maintain, and operate our transportation system. To do this, transportation engineers need a broad background about different elements in this system. The breadth and complexity of the transportation system is one of the aspects that makes a career in transportation appealing, but it is also one of the largest challenges in educating the future transportation engineer.
Traditionally, most transportation engineers graduate from undergraduate programs in civil engineering. Within the undergraduate civil engineering curriculum, three-quarters of the programs require one or two transportation engineering courses to introduce civil engineering students to the profession by providing a broad background of the field1. Most often, students do not take these courses until the junior year of the program. Elective courses are then used to give students more depth into specific topics within transportation engineering. The challenge is how
Sanford Bernhardt, K., & Beyerlein, S., & Bill, A., & Nambisan, S., & van Schalkwyk, I., & Turochy, R., & Young, R. (2010, June), Development Of Core Concepts And Learning Outcomes For The Introductory Transportation Course Paper presented at 2010 Annual Conference & Exposition, Louisville, Kentucky. 10.18260/1-2--16413
ASEE holds the copyright on this document. It may be read by the public free of charge. Authors may archive their work on personal websites or in institutional repositories with the following citation: © 2010 American Society for Engineering Education. Other scholars may excerpt or quote from these materials with the same citation. When excerpting or quoting from Conference Proceedings, authors should, in addition to noting the ASEE copyright, list all the original authors and their institutions and name the host city of the conference. - Last updated April 1, 2015