University of Washington

• Project: Digital Dissemination Platform of Transportation Engineering Educational Materials Founded in Adoption Research • PI: Shane Brown (WSU) • Co-Investigators: D. Hurwitz (OSU), M. Hallenbeck (UW), M. Kyte (UI), R. Perkins (UAF) National interest abounds in improving engineering education in the US. This interest stems from low performance on concept inventories (P.S. Steif, Dollar, & Dantzler, 2005; Paul S Steif & Hansen, 2006) concerns over the role of the US as a national economic leader (The National Academies, 2006), evidence of best practices in curriculum development and pedagogy, and a sense that we can just do things better. These concerns have led to the development of an abundance of materials and methods that are based on effective methods of development and/or been shown to be effective on student learning and other important educational outcomes. While progress has been made in improving courses and curriculum, it is greatly hindered by inefficiencies associated with duplicating development efforts. For example, there are approximately 200 introduction to transportation engineering courses taught annually in the US and little evidence of sharing of materials (other than textbooks) in these courses. More knowledge is needed on how and why faculty and teachers adopt curriculum. Where do they go for resources when developing a new course or revising an old course? How do they make adoption decisions when they find curriculum? In what forms can dissemination venues (such as websites) take to optimize adoption? How can higher education and workforce development curriculum be shared efficiently? This project will begin to answer these important questions through an investigation of how faculty adopt curriculum when developing a new course or revising an existing course and using this knowledge to develop an architecture and sustainable plan for a web-based dissemination venue. In parallel with this work, faculty from University of Alaska, Fairbanks will develop and test courses focused on working professionals. We will monitor this course development process to add to our knowledge base for repository development. YEAR ONE RESEARCH PROJECTS: Small Projects for 2012-13 • Project: Recycle Concrete Aggregate for PCCP • PI: Haifang Wen (WSU) The Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) has initiated a research project to investigate the use of recycled concrete as aggregates (RCA) in Portland (hydraulic) cement concrete pavements (PCCP). The planned source for the RCA in the project will be from demolished pavements in western Washington, which generally contain very high quality aggregates. Aggregate quality varies across the state, and concrete made with RCA sourced elsewhere will likely have different properties. This PacTrans proposal will expand the scope of WSDOT project to include additional sources of RCA as well as evaluations of the RCA properties for the purpose of establishing performance criteria necessary for successful application to PCCP. The goal of the combined projects is to evaluate the use of RCA for widespread application in concrete pavements in Washington State and beyond. The objectives of this project are to investigate the use of RCA from demolished pavements as coarse aggregate in new PCCP and to establish needed performance criteria for successful application. Combined with the parallel WSDOT project, the study will investigate the properties of concrete incorporating RCA obtained from three geographically-dispersed sources in Washington. Tests will be performed to evaluate the RCA properties and the effects of RCA on concrete mix designs, workability, fresh and hardened properties, long-term durability and cost. -- 10 Pacific Northwest Transportation Consortium

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