Effective use of Highway Capacity Manual in teaching physical elements of transportation engineering

In this paper, the effective way of explaining concepts of design and analysis of physical elements of transportation engineering, such as signalized intersection, two-way multi-lane highway, two-stop control, all-way stop control, ramps, weaving lanes, roundabout using the Highway Capacity Manual and the software is explained. The instructor teaches this course every alternate spring semester to the seniors and graduate students as part of the advanced transportation elective. The instructor reinforces the concepts by requiring students to solve the problems in the Highway Capacity Manual and solving the same problems with highway capacity software. Then, as part of the homework, the students, in group of three, solve the problems manually and then follow-up with solving the problem with Highway Capacity software. After each topic is completed, a design project obtained from a local reputed consulting firm is assigned to each group. The students then make a short presentation of their design to the class (15-20 min) with the consultants from the firm serving as clients. This pedagogical technique adopted for each of the physical elements of transportation provides the necessary depth to enhance the understanding of the development of the design procedure. The graduate students have to do a presentation and a paper on contemporary topics and the student performance measurement metrics, the student assessment, and the course evaluations are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of this technique.