Simulating Transportation for Realistic Engineering Education and Training Engaging Undergraduate Students in Transportation Studies

to solve new problems that arise.” Previous studies, however, have revealed a decrease in the hourly requirements of transportation-related courses offered for undergraduate students (3, 4), and entry-level engineers lack significant exposure to transportation engineering methodologies (3). To solve this problem, the transportation engineering curriculum, both in its content and teaching methods, must become more rigorous and technically focused to meet market needs. Most transportation-related courses still depend on traditional methods: “chalk and talk” lectures, problem solving using paper and pencils, and class projects (5, 6). These courses and methods often fail to motivate students, limiting their ability to assimilate knowledge and apply it in their future work. This established approach to transportation education does not expose undergraduate students to the many challenging issues that would hopefully encourage them to pursue careers in transportation engineering. Consequently, as a recent survey has shown (4), there has been a slight decrease in the number of graduates in transportation engineering even though there has been increased demand from the transportation industry. For more than a decade, finding qualified entry-level transportation engineers has been a major concern for employers of transportation professionals (3), particularly in light of the overall aging of the workforce in the transportation field. For example, the average age of managers and of high-level engineers with the Minnesota Department of Transportation is between 55 and 60 (7 ). Given that transportation problems are not going away, fresh ideas and a new generation of transportation professionals need to be brought into the field. To engage students and deliver knowledge better, then, a new paradigm for transportation engineering education is needed. In various studies, the use of simulation has been demonstrated to be a promising strategy for teaching (8–10). Simulation allows students to engage actively in their learning by running experiments, testing different strategies, and acquiring a better understanding of the real world through depiction of its aspects by the simulator (11). In simulation, learners’ individual choices lead them down different paths toward different outcomes. Essentially, simulation allows students to learn directly from the outcomes of their own actions (8, 12, 13). Web-based education has become a popular and effective complement to classroom instruction in recent years. Online learning tools bring a classroom laboratory to the student through a computer. Web-based learning tools offer the benefit of platform and location independence. Through the Internet, users can virtually access these learning tools anytime and anywhere. Clearly, this approach can be integrated with other distance-learning methods already in use for teaching transportation technologies. For example, several web research modules for high school students have been developed by the Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) Simulating Transportation for Realistic Engineering Education and Training Engaging Undergraduate Students in Transportation Studies