Using Virtual Labs to Reinforce Learning in Transportation Engineering

CE 147 (Transportation Engineering) is a 4 unit required course in the Civil Engineering curriculum. It is an introductory course for some students and the only course in the area of Transportation Engineering for students who do not pursue an elective in the Transportation area. The course serves as a pre-requisite to other Transportation elective courses and serves students to prepare for their Fundamentals of Engineering (FE) exam which the first step towards eventual Professional Engineering (PE) certification. Lectures and labs are conducted every week. Each lab activity is two to three weeks in duration. Depending on students’ interests in pursuing other Transportation electives, students will take this course either in their junior or senior level semesters. In this course redesign, the lab section of the course will be redesigned using two separate models of virtual labs. First, a number of pre-lab learning modules will be developed which will be used to introduce students to background knowledge and information on the concepts used in the upcoming labs. Second, students will be provided information and guidelines on how to effectively conduct field data collection for upcoming lab exercises to help them better prepare for the challenges associated with field data collection.