Developing Laboratory Materials for the Introductory Transportation Engineering Course

Since 1987, the six member universities of the TransNow consortium have worked together on a variety of transportation research projects. The level of collaboration between the universities has increased as the researchers from each campus have had the opportunity to develop and enhance relationships with each other. During the academic year 1996-1997, this collaboration was extended to education. The University of Idaho served as the lead university for the project Development of Joint Education Programs for TransNow Universities, the objective of which was to develop a set of materials that include course listings, syllabi, and other information for transportation courses offered at each TransNow University. The next step in this process of educational collaboration was to provide a means for faculty from one or more TransNow universities to work together to jointly develop and share materials for a specific course commonly taught at each of the universities. While each university offers a broad range of transportation courses, each offers a required junior level course for civil engineering students in transportation engineering. This junior course was the logical one with which to begin such a cooperative effort.