Development and deployment of traffic control game: Integration with traffic engineering curriculum for teaching high school students

The Intelligent Transportation Systems Institute at the University of Minnesota has delivered several educational activities such as undergraduate research programs and online transportation web research modules for high school classes. The need is growing to extend the current educational outreach effort with additional focus on high school students. A goal is to interest high school students in transportation careers through the integration of educational game modules and curricula in teaching various concepts of intelligent transportation control and management. As part of the education and outreach effort, an interactive web-based traffic control simulation module and a professionally enhanced traffic game were developed and piloted to undergraduate transportation engineering classes and high school summer camps at the University of Minnesota. Several lessons developed for high school science classrooms were based on activities using the traffic control game. A developed curriculum was evaluated through observation of student participation and engagement during five summer camp sessions in 2008 and 2009. At the end of each session, a survey was performed to collect students' feedback and learning experience from the curriculum and traffic control game. Results from the survey indicated student excitement toward the game and their receptiveness to the traffic engineering curriculum. Students were significantly more aware of traffic engineering issues after participating in the curriculum activities. It is hoped that students will be able to learn from their experience through a simulation environment and use the experience to deepen their understanding of intelligent transportation systems.