{"id":6242,"date":"2020-09-24T11:28:56","date_gmt":"2020-09-24T19:28:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/pactrans\/?p=6242"},"modified":"2020-09-24T11:28:56","modified_gmt":"2020-09-24T19:28:56","slug":"high-schoolers-get-hands-on-and-virtual-transportation-engineering-experience-at-osus-summer-transportation-institute","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/pactrans\/high-schoolers-get-hands-on-and-virtual-transportation-engineering-experience-at-osus-summer-transportation-institute\/","title":{"rendered":"High schoolers get hands-on and virtual transportation engineering experience at OSU\u2019s Summer Transportation Institute"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Figure 1: Students survey the surrounding environment.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

A handful of Oregon state high school students were given the opportunity to gain a better understanding of transportation engineering through OSU\u2019s Summer Transportation Institute, a program that the university, partnered with FHWA, put together and held late last August.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

The staff designed and delivered transportation-related program content on a variety of transportation themes, including human factors, public engagement, system resilience, ethics, and real-world design projects. Staff also engaged a variety of speakers to deliver content on these themes.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The program\u2019s staff consisted of David Hurwitz, who acted as the director of the program, and four research assistants – Amy Wyman, Ananna Ahmed, Jasmin Woodside, and Alden Sova – who served as the program\u2019s instructors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Following the belief that the best way to expose students to the transportation domain is to go outside and experience it, the program contained two field trips: a campus walking tour and a bicycling tour of areas of transportation interest in Corvallis.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Figure 2: Students arrive back to campus from the bicycling tour. <\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Figure 3: Local engineers, Josh Bjornstedt and Gregg Wilson, discuss the development of a new multi-use path.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The walking and bicycling tours encouraged student awareness of transportation elements which can go unnoticed, and observation of applications of the concepts discussed in prior OSU institute modules.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Staff also incorporated a variety of hands-on, technology-oriented activities into the morning sessions. For many tactile learners, hands-on experience is a very effective way to solidify information.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Students were excited to work with high quality, real-world equipment in transportation settings. Such activities included a Thursday morning spent working with drones and total station equipment, as well as a high-tech sandbox.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An OSU geomatics research group, led by Dr. Chris Parrish, delivered a presentation on surveying and applications of geomatics, then performed an autonomous UAV scanning demonstration.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Figure 4: A student flies a drone.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

After the presentation, the students went outside and divided into two groups to complete two activities. One activity had students practice flying drones to observe a parking lot. The second group of students learned to work with total stations and other surveying equipment.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After laying surveying markers across a field, student pairs practiced tracking and recording marker locations using tripods and prism poles. Both activities allowed students to gain a real-world understanding of what surveying procedures look like in the transportation domain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An OSU construction engineering management research group, led by Dr. Joseph Louis, demonstrated a novel Sandbox as a research and operations tool in the construction and transportation engineering domain.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Figures 5 and 6: Students manipulate the sandbox and observe the effects on the projection.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Students interacted with the sandbox to develop cut and fill decisions for a virtually projected road segment. The Sandbox was also used to overlay a traffic simulation on a geostatic road network. This activity introduced students to a novel hands-on research tool.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Adhering to guidelines laid out by the governor of Oregon\u2019s office in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, there were 10 students in total who participated in the program – nine who attended the in-person portion of the camp, and one who was able to join in on the virtual portion.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PacTrans was able to contribute funding that supported some of the program\u2019s instructional staff and a portion of the classroom materials. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A handful of Oregon state high school students were given the opportunity to gain a better understanding of transportation engineering through OSU\u2019s Summer Transportation Institute, a program that the university, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6242","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/pactrans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6242","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/pactrans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/pactrans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/pactrans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/pactrans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6242"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/pactrans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6242\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6243,"href":"https:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/pactrans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6242\/revisions\/6243"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/pactrans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6242"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/pactrans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6242"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/pactrans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6242"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}