Cockrell School of Engineering
Please direct all questions about the flag proposal process to the Center for the Skills & Experience Flags.
C E 367G Design and Evaluation of Ground-Based Transportation Systems
Department of Civil, Architectural, and Environmental Engineering
Please describe how students will engage in independent investigation and presentation of their own work through the course. Please explain specifically how your course engages students in the process of inquiry in your discipline.
Students independently complete open-ended, design-focused assignments every week or two. These are structured to help students develop the necessary skills to successfully complete the course’s major design project. Their design project involves the specification and evaluation of a wholly new, unique and significant transportation investment (e.g., a transit-oriented development, the neighborhood transportation systems around a light- or heavy-rail line, a major highway interchange, a heavily used urban corridor, a suburban neighborhood, a town bypass, and/or a tolled freeway). This project requires recognition of engineering standards of safety and quality, alongside various real-world constraints, including economic, environmental, social, political, ethical, and public health factors, demand for transportation system services, constructability and sustainability.
What kinds of projects, artifacts, presentations, or performances do your students produce as a result of engaging in this process of inquiry?
The students must present all core details of their design, including location, orientation, and sizing; traffic demands versus capacity, costs versus benefits, space requirements, safety and emissions impacts, and any other consequences of interest (e.g., economic and/or drainage) in detail, using plan and profile graphics and a 20+ page report. Teammates orally present all work to a panel of experts and classmates, with all students participating in the presentations.
Please explain what independent work students will do in this course. If students are engaged in collaborative or team-based projects, explain how every student will exercise responsibility for and independence with some portion of the project.
The multi-stage team project is in addition to almost-weekly design and lab assignments (which are assigned over the first 10 weeks of the semester). Various roles and opportunities exist for individual contributions toward the complex, multi-faceted design projects. Students must describe the roles they each played on their teams (in a one to two-page submission), and must assign value to all their teammates’ contributions (by divvying up the team’s fixed “consulting fee” among “colleagues”). Each individual’s score (averaged across teammates’ payouts) scales his/her team’s “average” score up or down, to produce an individualized score, better reflecting individual contributions, while incentivizing active collaboration and real contribution.
What pedagogical strategies do you use to prepare students to undertake the inquiry process in your course? If applicable, how does the work that students produce in this course build upon skills or knowledge they have developed in previous coursework?
Geometry, Physics, Calculus, Computer-Aided Design & Graphics, CE301 (Intro to Civil Engineering), CE321 (Transportation Systems) and ARE323K (Project Management) are important upstream courses. They introduce the students to design basics (e.g., space requirements, centrifugal forces and stopping distances), plan sheets & technical drawing, appropriate roadway alignments, transportation demand, and engineering economics. Students may also rely on content from CAEE courses in Hydraulics and Structures, depending on the areas of depth they wish to add to their project design work.
Please specify what percentage of the students’ grade is based on the process of inquiry described above. Note that for a 3-hour course, at least one-third of the course grade must be based on the students’ independent investigation and presentation of their own work. (Students’ independent work must constitute one-half of the grade for 2-hour courses and all of the grade for 1-hour courses.)
Design assignments and project work represent 60 percent of final course grade.