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Interdisciplinary Education Outreach with Traffic Sensor Build Kits
Sarah V. Hernandez and Mariah B. Crews
The goal of this project was to attract K-12 students to transportation engineering careers through STEM outreach programs. To accomplish this goal, the object of the project was to design and implement maritime freight oriented educational outreach activities centered on traffic sensing technologies for middle, high school, and first-year college students. In MarTREC Project 5011 (Evaluating the Performance of Intermodal Connectors), the research team designed a low-cost, easily implementable LiDAR and Bluetooth sensor bundle that was capable of detecting, characterizing, and tracking freight trucks as they traveled to and from inland waterway port areas. The sensor provided data necessary to measure port performance and roadway usage by industry. This project re-designed the sensor bundle as an educational outreach activity by creating sensor "build kits" and associated lesson plans for middle school, high school, and first year university students. The concept of the build kits as a tool was highly praised when presented by the PI to professionals at the Missouri Valley Institute of Transportation Engineers (MOVITE) fall meeting in 2017.
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Introduction to Signal Timing & Traffic Control
Sarah V. Hernandez, Mariah Crew, Karla Diaz-Corro, and Taslima Akter
The purpose of these lesson plans is to introduce students to traffic signalization basics. Students will be lead through a series of mini-lectures on traffic control and signalization including a discussion on the limitations and benefits of traffic signalization. The lesson plans compliment a computer simulation “game” in which students act as manual operators for a single up to four by four gridded intersection. Students attempt to control the progression of signals to understand the relationship between signal timing and user delay. Through experimentation with the simulation, students generate a presentation discussing the benefits and drawbacks of signal timing and graph the relationship between signal cycle length and driver delay. The lesson plan concludes with each student group giving a presentation on their experimental findings. This set of lesson plans includes the lecture PowerPoint slides with scripted comments and the simulation game files.
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Transportation Engineering: Traffic Control Simulator
Sarah V. Hernandez, Karla Diaz-Corro, Taslima Akter, Magdalena Asborno, and Fu Durandal
The purpose of these lesson plans is to introduce students to traffic signalization basics. Students will be lead through a series of mini-lectures on traffic control and signalization including a discussion on the limitations and benefits of traffic signalization. The lesson plans compliment a computer simulation “game” in which students act as manual operators for a single up to four by four gridded intersection. Students attempt to control the progression of signals to understand the relationship between signal timing and user delay. Through experimentation with the simulation, students generate a presentation discussing the benefits and drawbacks of signal timing and graph the relationship between signal cycle length and driver delay. The lesson plan concludes with each student group giving a presentation on their experimental findings. This set of lesson plans includes the lecture PowerPoint slides with scripted comments and the simulation game files.
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