Refinement and Dissemination of a Digital Platform for Sharing Transportation Education Materials
PI: Kevin Chang (UI), kchang@uidaho.edu
Co-Investigators: Shane Brown (OSU), David Hurwitz (OSU), Bill Cofer (WSU), Robert Perkins (UAF), Linda Boyle (UW)
Dates: 6/01/2013 – 7/31/2015
Led by: (University of Idaho) Professors Kevin Chang and Ahmed Abdel-Rahim, this project is the PacTrans multi-institution Education Project for 2013-2014. (A phase II project, it builds on the successes of the phase I PacTrans multi-institution Education Project for 2012-2013.)
Final Project Report: PacTrans-41-UI-Chang
National interest abounds in improving engineering education stemming from concerns over the role of the US as a national economic leader (NRC 1999; NRC 1999), low performance on concept inventories (Hestenes, Wells et al. 1992; Olds, Streveler et al. 2004; Gray, Costanzo et al. 2005; Allen 2006), and a sense that we can improve the state-of-the-practice. These concerns have led to the development of an abundance of materials and methods that have been shown to be an effective means of improving student learning and other important educational outcomes. While progress has been made improving courses and curriculum, it is greatly hindered by inefficiencies associated with duplicating development efforts. For example, there are approximately 200 introduction to transportation engineering courses taught annually in the US and little evidence to suggest that teaching materials (other than textbooks) are being shared between the instructors of these courses. The National Science Foundation (NSF) spends millions of dollars annually through the Transforming Undergraduate Education (TUES) (NSF 2012) in the STEM program on the development and testing of teaching methods and materials. Conversations with NSF program managers indicate that they are disappointed with the rate of return on this investment, and would like to see much less development and much more sharing and dissemination of best practices. New NSF programs are emerging specifically on utilizing best practices and understanding the adoption process.
