Outreach Program for Middle and High School Students to Promote Transportation Engineering

Introducing children to transportation engineering through outreach is essential to meeting the future need for transportation engineers. An online activity was designed in Qualtrics, consisting of survey questions, a pre-activity test pertaining to transportation engineering, links to educational videos, a transportation game, a post-activity test to gauge learning, and a short essay. Participants were recruited through local middle and high schools and through TRIO Upward Bound Math-Science programs nationwide. The students would perform better on the post-test survey than the pre-test survey, indicating the occurrence of learning and the one-direction t-test revealed that the improvement was statistically significant. The relationships between gender, grade, and the improvement on the content questions were analyzed using box plots. The male-identifying students had higher scores overall, but similar levels of improvement occurred for both male and female students. The 8-10th grade students improved the most among the various grade levels. The students reported enjoying the activity and having an increased interest in transportation engineering. Overall, the online survey with videos, games, and engagement questions proved to be an effective outreach method. These results shed light on the design of future outreach projects as the effects of the pandemic may last.