An investigation in student conceptual understanding of geometric design

The purpose of this paper is to investigate student conceptual understanding of fundamental transportation engineering concepts, focusing explicitly on geometric design. Geometric design is a critical element to all transportation engineering courses, encompassing essential concepts needed in current conventional roadway design. Clinical interviews with twenty students were used to investigate student understanding. Three broad areas of geometric design based conceptual misunderstanding have emerged from the initial analysis of the student interviews; including sight distance versus stopping sight distance misconceptions, inability to design horizontal curves, and increasing reliance on equations and previous homework examples to solve new problems. The results from this study can be used to assess current transportation engineering curriculum, and enlighten future researchers about the causes of conceptual difficulty.