Transportation Engineering Instructors' Decision-Making Processes for Course Changes

Much funding has been dedicated to the development of research-based instructional strategies in an effort to improve the state of science and engineering education in the United States, but these efforts have not led to the desired level of dissemination and adoption among engineering faculty members. In order to better understand what is hindering the dissemination and adoption of research-based curricular components, more insight is needed into the curriculum planning and sharing processes of engineering educators. To that end, interviews were conducted with 24 transportation engineering instructors about their curriculum planning in order to better understand the decision-making process and to determine characteristics of curricular components that instructors implement in their classrooms. Specifically, this article examines what course components faculty change, why they change them, how they go about changing them, and what resources they utilize to make changes. Based on these findings, recommendations for curriculum materials developers and researchers are made.