The impacts of virtual teaching technologies on transportation education during the pandemic

The practice of transportation engineering education has evolved substantially over the past few decades. Researchers, engineers, and designers today encounter a wide range of increasingly complicated problems. An urgent problem engineering education is facing is the COVID-19 pandemic that has changed how engineering education is practiced worldwide. Since the social distancing order was initiated in the United States around March of 2020, universities across the United States have adopted online teaching, and students were forced to take all of their classes online. Because of the pandemic, many universities were forced to convert all of their classes online abruptly without previous planning. This research aims to determine the impact of the current COVID-19 pandemic on transportation engineering education. We investigate online teaching's impact on students enrolled in the highway engineering lab (CE3601L) offered at Cal Poly Pomona. In particular, we would like to explore how students adapt to virtual technologies applied for online courses during the pandemic. For this research, data was collected from 5 highway design labs that implemented different technologies, including online textbooks, tutorial videos, online aiding resources, 3D virtual programs, and virtual reality during their online class sessions. Data were collected at different periods of the semester to test the student's understanding of highway design and engagement level during their online lab. Data collected will be used to analyze students' engagement and learning curve during the five labs incorporated in this study.