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Incorporating Active Learning Debate Sessions in Traffic & Transportation in Undergraduate Civil Engineering Courses

Moderated class debates have become one common form of active learning methods employed in several disciplines. This paper observes and traces the introduction of one active learning method – moderated student debate sessions – to undergraduate civil engineering students for their transportation courses at West Virginia University – Institute of Technology. In these sessions, students divided into groups were given the choice from several controversial topics in transportation to choose from and to debate being with or against this solution or project. The authors describe these debate sessions and share their experience and results. In addition to the sessions’ positive outcomes such as improving students’ debating skills, results show that these sessions provided additional breadth to the understanding of the complexity of transportation and traffic issues, and also provided a level of excitement and challenge which positively influenced the students’ attitude towards researching traffic engineering topics. As students prepared and studied these topics thoroughly, they indicated after the debate session that it made them think differently towards transportation engineering issues. This paper also emphasizes the importance of using debate sessions towards fulfilling Outcome H of the ABET accreditation outcomes “Broad education necessary to understand the impact of engineering solutions in a global, economic, environmental, and societal context”