Hands-on Activities for Transportation/Engineering Courses

The Center for Technology & Training (CTT) has been working with faculty to create a series of modules designed to bring hands-on educational curriculum into the classroom either as part of a structured computational lab or as a class project. The intent is for students to gain experience using common commercial software (with free educational access) for practical reinforcement of concepts learned in the classroom. 

This material is being made available to instructors who would like to include a practical component to their course but do not have the time to develop the materials from scratch. Instructors are encouraged to modify the material as necessary to fit their syllabus. A sample syllabus is provided for each module to show how each lesson fits into the topics covered in a typical course. 

Each lesson has been designed to take one or two weeks to complete (2-3 hours per week) and the entire module will be completed over the course of a semester. Each lesson builds on the previous one so that students work toward a larger goal and can see the effects of their work as it builds on previous efforts. 

These modules may also be of interest to practicing engineers who are looking to gain an entry-level understanding of the capabilities and use of various software packages. Lessons have been designed to decrease the burden of entry into learning software by allowing the user to gain an overview and experience how to navigate within and use the software without getting bogged down in advanced operations or extraneous details. Once a user completes a module they will have familiarity with the software that will allow them to use freely available online tutorials to learn how to use advanced features specific to their needs.